Catenary optics for achromatic generation of perfect optical angular momentum

By Mingbo Pu, Xiong Li, Xiaoliang Ma, Yanqin Wang, Zeyu Zhao, Changtao Wang, Chenggang Hu, Ping Gao, Cheng Huang, H. Ren and 6 more. Science Advances, 2015

686 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The nanoscale structures inspired by the natural catenaries can achromatically spin light wave. The catenary is the curve that a free-hanging chain assumes under its own weight, and thought to be a “true mathematical and mechanical form” in architecture by Robert Hooke in the 1670s, with nevertheless no significant phenomena observed in optics. We show that the optical catenary can serve as a unique building block of metasurfaces to produce continuous and linear phase shift covering [0, 2π], a mission that is extremely difficult if not impossible for state-of-the-art technology. Via catenary arrays, planar optical devices are designed and experimentally characterized to generate various kinds of beams carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM). These devices can operate in an ultra-broadband spectrum because the anisotropic modes associated with the spin-orbit interaction are almost independent of the incident light frequency. By combining the optical and topological characteristics, our approach would allow the complete control of photons within a single nanometric layer.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Biomedical Engineering, Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/eaa307e32f818f534266b34241dbca5745bffcb2

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Citations in the corpus

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A broadband achromatic metalens in the visible (2018, background): “term in equation (2) is dispersionless and the second term is wavelength dependent29.”
Multicolor 3D meta-holography by broadband plasmonic modulation (2016, background): “According to the local phase shift associated with the spin-orbit interaction and propagating bounded wave exchange (22), the phase of the cross-polarized light (F) depends on the orientation angle (φ) of the nanoslit by the relationF = 2φ for circular polarization incident light, which is used to d”