Bifunctional Full-Space Metasurface Combining Pancharatnam-Berry and Propagation Phases

A bifunctional full-space metasurface (FS-MS) capable of generating reflective multiple vortex beams and focusing transmissive electromagnetic waves within different frequency bands is presented in this letter. The generation of vortex beams is based on the Pancharatnam-Berry (PB) phase, which exhibits the property of full phase control by rotating the orientation angle of an I-shaped patch. Meanwhile, this PB unit is backed by a metallic square loop frequency selective surface (FSS), which behaves as stopband and passband responses around 18 GHz and 12 GHz, respectively. By encoding PB phase to generate a certain phase response, four reflective vortex beams carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) are achieved at a higher frequency band under normal incidence. On the other hand, the incident waves operating at a lower frequency band can pass through such an FSS-backed PB unit and be focused by a three-layer composite unit consisting of a polarization-conversion unit sandwiched by two orthogonal polarizers. Therefore, upon illumination of normal incident plane waves, the proposed FS-MS works as a multiple OAM beams generator and a focusing lens simultaneously. The proposed design can motivate the realizations of FS-MS and hold potential applications in intelligent housing systems.

Automated summary

This letter presents a bifunctional full-space metasurface (FS-MS) capable of generating reflective multiple vortex beams and focusing transmissive electromagnetic waves within different frequency bands. The generation of vortex beams is achieved by rotating the orientation angle of an I-shaped patch based on the Pancharatnam-Berry (PB) phase. A metallic square loop frequency selective surface (FSS) is used to support the PB unit, which allows the generation of reflective vortex beams at a higher frequency band. At a lower frequency band, the incident waves can pass through the FSS-backed PB unit and be focused by a three-layer composite unit. The proposed FS-MS can function as a multiple OAM beams generator and a focusing lens simultaneously.