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Plasmonic metasurfaces, which can be considered as the two-dimensional analog of metal-based metamaterials, have attracted progressively increasing attention in recent years because of the ease of fabrication and unprecedented control over the reflected or transmitted light while featuring relatively low losses even at optical wavelengths. Among all the different design approaches, gap-surface plasmon metasurfaces – a specific branch of plasmonic metasurfaces – which consist of a subwavelength thin dielectric spacer sandwiched between an optically thick metal film and arrays of metal subwavelength elements arranged in a strictly or quasi-periodic fashion, have gained awareness from researchers working at practically any frequency regime as its realization only requires a single lithographic step, yet with the possibility to fully control the amplitude, phase, and polarization of the reflected light. In this paper, we review the fundamentals, recent developments, and opportunities of gap-surface plasmon metasurfaces. Starting with introducing the concept of gap-surface plasmon metasurfaces, we present three typical gap-surface plasmon resonators, introduce generalized Snell’s law, and explain the concept of Pancharatnam-Berry phase. We then overview the main applications of gap-surface plasmon metasurfaces, including beam-steerers, flat lenses, holograms, absorbers, color printing, polarization control, surface wave couplers, and dynamically reconfigurable metasurfaces. The review is ended with a short summary and outlook on possible future developments.

Orbital angular momentum (OAM) is a phenomenon of vortex phase distribution in free space, which has attracted enormous attention in theoretical research and practical application of wireless communication systems due to its characteristic of infinitely orthogonal modes. However, traditional methods generating OAM beams are bound to complex structure, large device, multiple layers, complex feed networks, and limited beams in microwave range. Here, a digital coding transmissive metasurface (DCTMS) with a single layer substrate and the bi-symmetrical arrow is proposed and designed to generate multi-OAM-beam based on Pancharatnam−Berry (PB) phase principle. The 3-bit phase response can be realized by encoding the geometric phase into rotation angle of unit cell for DCTMS. Additionally, the phase compensation of the metasurface is introduced to achieve the beam focusing and the conversion from spherical wave to plane wave. According to the digital convolution theorem, the far-field patterns and near-field distributions of multi-OAM-beam with l= −2 modes are adequately demonstrated by DCTMS prototypes. The OAM efficiency and the purity are calculated to demonstrate the excellent multi-OAM-beam. The simulated and experimental results illustrate their performance of OAM beams. The designed DCTMS has profound application in multi-platform wireless communication systems and the multi-channel imaging systems.

Beating is a simple physical phenomenon known for long in the context of sound waves but remained surprisingly unexplored for light waves. When two monochromatic optical beams of different frequencies and states of polarization interfere, the polarization state of the superposition field exhibits temporal periodic variation-polarization beating. In this work, we reveal a foundational and elegant phase structure underlying such polarization beating. We show that the phase difference over a single beating period decomposes into the Pancharatnam-Berry geometric phase and a dynamical phase of which the former depends exclusively on the intensities and polarization states of the interfering beams whereas the sum of the phases is determined solely by the beam frequencies. Varying the intensity and polarization characteristics of the beams, the relative contributions of the geometric and dynamical phases can be adjusted. The geometric phase inherent in polarization beating is governed by a compact expression containing only the Stokes parameters of the interfering waves and can alternatively be obtained from the individual beam intensities and the amplitude of the intensity beats. We demonstrate both approaches experimentally by using an interferometer with a fast detector and a specific polarimetric arrangement. Polarization beating has a unique character that the geometric and dynamical phases are entangled, i.e. variation in one unavoidably leads to a change in the other. Our work expands geometric phases into a new domain and offers important novel insight into the role of polarization in interference of electromagnetic waves.

An ultrathin flat metalens that experimentally realizes three-dimensional microwave manipulation has been demonstrated as able to approach the theoretical limit of cross-polarization (cross-pol) conversion efficiency of the transmission, as predicted by Monticone et al (2013 Phys. Rev. Lett. 110 203903). The helicity-dependent phase change is introduced to the transmission and can be engineered by assembling the spatial orientation of each Pancharatnam-Berry phase element. By realizing the constant phase gradients in orthogonal directions, an anomalous non-coplanar refraction is unanimously demonstrated in the three-dimensional space under the circular-polarized incidence, and the refraction angle is well predicted with the generalized Snell's law, derived with phase gradients in orthogonal directions. More importantly, the maximum conversion efficiency of the cross-pol transmission is as high as 24%, which approaches the upper-bound of the theoretical limit. The proposed metalens has only a single layer as thin as 0.001 , which massively reduces the thickness of the microwave lens along the wave propagation direction. With the great improvements in efficiency and the thickness reduction, as well as the excellent non-coplanar refraction, our design provides a promising approach to miniaturize, planarize and integrate multiple microwave components.

Pancharatnam−Berry (PB) phase metasurface, as a special class of gradient metasurfaces, has been paid much attention owing to the robust performance for phase control of circularly polarized waves. Herein, we present an element-based polarizer for the first step, which enables the incident electromagnetic waves into the cross-polarized waves with the relative bandwidth of 71%, and the polarization conversion ratio exceeds 90% at 6.9−14.5 GHz. Then an eight-elements coding polarizer based on the PB phase is presented for the applications on beam control and radar cross section reduction. The simulated values indicate that the reduction of radar cross section is more than 10 dB at 6−16 GHz. Our work reveals the availability of manipulating the waves, beamforming in communication systems and electromagnetic stealth, and so on.

In an optical Pancharatnam-Berry (PB) phase metasurface, each sub-wavelength dielectric structure of varied spatial orientation can be treated as a point source with the same amplitude yet varied relative phase. In this work, we introduce an optimized genetic algorithm (GA) method for the synthesis of one-dimensional (1D) PB phase-controlled dielectric metasurfaces by seeking for optimized phase profile solutions, which differs from previously reported amplitude-controlled GA method only applicable to generate transverse optical modes with plasmonic metasurfaces. The GA–optimized phase profiles can be readily used to construct dielectric metasurfaces with improved functionalities. The loop of phase-controlled GA consists of initialization, random mutation, screened evolution, and duplication. Here random mutation is realized by changing the phase of each unit cell, and this process should be efficient to obtain enough mutations to drive the whole GA process under supervision of appropriate mutation boundary. A well-chosen fitness function ensures the right direction of screened evolution, and the duplication process guarantees an equilibrated number of generated light patterns. Importantly, we optimize the GA loop by introducing a multi-step hierarchical mutation process to break local optimum limits. We demonstrate the validity of our optimized GA method by generating longitudinal optical modes (i. e., non-diffractive light sheets) with 1D PB phase dielectric metasurfaces having non-analytical counter-intuitive phase profiles. The produced large-area, long-distance light sheets could be used for realizing high-speed, low-noise light-sheet microscopy. Additionally, a simplified 3D light pattern generated by a 2D PB phase metasurface further reveals the potential of our optimized GA method for manipulating truly 3D light fields.

Airy beams exhibit intriguing properties such as nonspreading, self-bending, and self-healing and have attracted considerable recent interest because of their many potential applications in photonics, such as to beam focusing, light-sheet microscopy, and biomedical imaging. However, previous approaches to generate Airy beams using photonic structures have suffered from severe chromatic problems arising from strong frequency dispersion of the scatterers. Here, we design and fabricate a metasurface composed of silicon posts for the frequency range 0.4–0.8 THz in transmission mode, and we experimentally demonstrate achromatic Airy beams exhibiting autofocusing properties. We further show numerically that a generated achromatic Airy-beam-based metalens exhibits self-healing properties that are immune to scattering by particles and that it also possesses a larger depth of focus than a traditional metalens. Our results pave the way to the realization of flat photonic devices for applications to noninvasive biomedical imaging and light-sheet microscopy, and we provide a numerical demonstration of a device protocol.

Achieving a pre-designed scattering pattern from an ultra-compact platform is highly desired for on-chip integration optics, but conventional techniques suffer from the limitations of bulky size, wavelength-scale modulation and low efficiency. Here, we propose a new strategy to generate arbitrary scattering far-field patterns from surface-wave (SW) excitations on a designer Pancharatnam–Berry (PB) metasurface. We find that a PB meta-atom serves as a subwavelength scatter to decouple impinging SW to a propagating wave (PW) with tailored amplitude and phase, and thus interference among PWs generated by scatterings at different PB meta-atoms can generate a tailored far-field pattern. As a proof of concept, we design and fabricate a series of PB metasurfaces in the microwave regime and experimentally demonstrate that they can generate desired radiation patterns within a broad frequency band, including unidirectional radiation, line/point focusing, vortex beam and hologram. These findings may stimulate important applications in on-chip integrated photonics.

Vectorial optical fields (VOFs) exhibiting tailored wave fronts and spatially inhomogeneous polarization distributions are particularly useful in photonic applications. However, devices to generate them, made by natural materials or recently proposed metasurfaces, are either bulky in size or less efficient, or exhibit restricted performances. Here, we propose a general approach to design metadevices that can efficiently generate two distinct VOFs under illuminations of circularly polarized lights with different helicity. After illustrating our scheme via both Jones matrix analyses and analytical model calculations, we experimentally demonstrate two metadevices in the near-infrared regime, which can generate vortex beams carrying different orbital angular momenta yet with distinct inhomogeneous polarization distributions. Our results provide an ultracompact platform for bifunctional generations of VOFs, which may stimulate future works on VOF-related applications in integration photonics.

Geometric phase is a far‐reaching concept in quantum and classical physics, revealing deep connections between topology and wave dynamics in diverse systems. The Pancharatnam‐Berry (PB) geometric phase, which arises from 2D optical polarization evolution, has revolutionized light manipulation by enabling optical metasurfaces. The PB phase is commonly regarded as a unique property of light waves. Generalizing this concept to other classical waves can uncover new geometric phase properties and enable novel wave control mechanisms. Here, the first observation of the PB phase in surface water (gravity) waves is reported, achieved through the interaction with symmetry‐engineered scatterers. In contrast to the optical PB phase, the water‐wave PB phase is an intrinsic higher‐order geometric phase induced by 4D evolution of spin‐orbit states. It exhibits remarkable properties, including unbounded phase values, spin‐momentum‐locked unidirectional channels, and a Poincaré hypersphere representation. PB metasurfaces are further realized for versatile manipulation of water wavefronts, including steering and focusing. This work reveals the universality of the PB phase across different wave systems and generalizes it to higher‐dimensional state evolutions. The results open new avenues for exploring the geometric and topological properties of water waves, with potential applications in coastal protection and wave energy harvesting. The first observation of the Pancharatnam‐Berry (PB) phase in water waves is reported, revealing its extraordinary properties including unbounded phase values, spin‐momentum‐locked unidirectional channels, and a Poincaré hypersphere representation. These findings demonstrate the universality of the PB phase across different wave systems and in higher‐dimensional state evolutions, with promising applications in coastal protection and wave energy harvesting.