High‐Efficiency Broadband Achromatic Metadevice for Spin‐to‐Orbital Angular Momentum Conversion of Light in the Near‐Infrared

Abstract

Spin‐orbital angular momentum conversion (SOC) of light has found applications in classical and quantum optics. However, the existing SOC elements suffer severe restrictions on broadband integrated applications at miniature scales, due to bulky configurations, single function, and failing to control the dispersion. Herein, a high‐efficiency broadband achromatic method for independently and elaborately engineering the dispersion and the SOC of light based on a cascaded metasurface device is proposed. The metadevice is capable of efficiently decoupling the SOC from the modulation of dispersion with high‐broadband focusing efficiency up to 75%. For the proof of concept, the generation of high‐efficiency achromatic‐focused and spin‐controlled optical vortices with switchable topological charge (lσ=+1=1 and lσ=−1=2) is successfully demonstrated. The presence of achromatically and highly concentrated optical vortices with tunable photonic angular momentum using spin as an optical knob makes the proposed ultracompact and multifunctional metadevice a promising platform for optical micromanipulation at nanoscale dimensions.

Keywords

• achromatically focusing
• control of dispersions
• multifunctional metasurfaces
• optical vortices
• spin‐to‐orbit conversions