Noninterleaved Metasurface for Full-Polarization Three-Dimensional Vectorial Holography

Metasurface-enabled full-polarization vectorial holography has attracted numerous attention due to the promising applications for multichannel displays, enhanced information capacity, and optical encryption. However, recently showcased design strategies suffer from undesirable cross-talk resulting from interleaved meta-atoms and are restricted to a two-dimensional plane. This work presents a general approach for full-polarization beam shaping in three-dimensional space by completely exploiting the capacity of a noninterleaved metasurface. The noninterleaved metasurface is spin-decoupled, which is capable of achieving independent phase control for the two orthogonal circular polarizations by combining both propagation and geometric phases. As a proof-of-concept, a three-dimensional vectorial holography capable of converting the linear polarized light to holographic images with arbitrary spatial polarization distributions is experimentally demonstrated. Taking use of the extended dimension, the z-axis distance, which provides a new degree of flexibility for boosting information capacity and security, a double-level optical encryption scheme is implemented. This work provides a compact and general scheme for full-polarization channel wavefront steering, unlocking a new door for designing planar polarization functionality devices.

Automated summary

This study presents a method for full-polarization beam shaping in three-dimensional space using metasurfaces. The method utilizes noninterleaved metasurfaces to achieve independent phase control for two orthogonal circular polarizations. The study also demonstrates a double-level optical encryption scheme by utilizing the extended dimension, providing a compact and general scheme for full-polarization channel wavefront steering.