Achromatic terahertz Airy beam generation with dielectric metasurfaces
Cheng Qingqing,
Wang Juncheng,
Ma Ling,
Shen Zhixiong,
Zhang Jing,
Zheng Xiaoying,
Chen Tao,
Yu Ye,
Yu Dong,
He Qiong,
Hu Wei,
Li Tao,
Zhuang Songlin,
Zhou Lei
Affiliations
Cheng Qingqing
School of Optical-Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai200093, China
Wang Juncheng
School of Optical-Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai200093, China
Ma Ling
School of Optical-Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai200093, China
Shen Zhixiong
Key Laboratory of Intelligent Optical Sensing and Manipulation and College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing210093, China
Zhang Jing
School of Optical-Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai200093, China
Zheng Xiaoying
State Key Laboratory of Surface Physics, Key Laboratory of Micro and Nano Photonic Structures (Ministry of Education), Department of Physics, Fudan University, Shanghai200438, China
Chen Tao
School of Optical-Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai200093, China
Yu Ye
School of Optical-Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai200093, China
Yu Dong
School of Optical-Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai200093, China
He Qiong
State Key Laboratory of Surface Physics, Key Laboratory of Micro and Nano Photonic Structures (Ministry of Education), Department of Physics, Fudan University, Shanghai200438, China
Hu Wei
Key Laboratory of Intelligent Optical Sensing and Manipulation and College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing210093, China
Li Tao
National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing210093, China
Zhuang Songlin
School of Optical-Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai200093, China
Zhou Lei
State Key Laboratory of Surface Physics, Key Laboratory of Micro and Nano Photonic Structures (Ministry of Education), Department of Physics, Fudan University, Shanghai200438, China
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.
