Bifunctional Electromagnetic Manipulation of Surface Waves Using Metasurfaces Under One Circularly Polarized Incidence

Abstract

The ability to freely manipulate the wavefronts of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) or surface waves (SWs), particularly with multifunctional integration, is of great importance in near-field photonics. However, conventional SPP control devices typically suffer from low efficiency and single-function limitations. Although recent works have proposed metasurfaces that achieve bifunctional SPP manipulation, their implementation relies on the excitations of circularly polarized (CP) light with different helicities. Here, we propose a generic approach to designing bifunctional SPP meta-devices under single-helicity circularly polarized incidence. Constructed using carefully selected and arranged meta-atoms that possess both structural resonance and a geometric phase, this kind of meta-device can exhibit two distinct SPP manipulation functionalities in both co- and cross-polarized output channels under one CP incidence. As proof of this concept, we designed a bifunctional meta-device in the microwave regime and numerically demonstrated that it can convert a normally incident left circularly polarized (LCP) beam into SWs, exhibiting both a focused wavefront in the co-polarized output channel and a deflected wavefront in the cross-polarized output channel. Our findings substantially enrich the capabilities of metasurfaces to manipulate near-field electromagnetic waves, which can find many applications in practice.

Keywords

• bifunctional
• metasurface
• surface waves
• co-polarized
• cross-polarized