Manipulation of vector beam polarization with geometric metasurfaces

Abstract

© 2017 Optical Society of America. Describing a class of beams with space-variant polarization, vector beams find many applications in both classical and quantum optics. However, simultaneous manipulation of its space-dependent polarization states is still a challenge with a single optical element. Here we demonstrate polarization modulation of a vector field by employing a plasmonic metasurface exhibiting strong and controllable optical activity. By changing the lateral phase shift between two reflective metasurface supercells, the rotation angle of a linear polarized light can be continuously tuned from zero to π with a high efficiency. As the optical activity of our metasurface devices only depends on geometrical phase, the metasurfaces can simultaneously modulate the rotation angle of a vector beam regardless of its space-variant polarization distribution. Our work provides a high efficient method in manipulating the polarization state of vector beams, especially with metasurface in a compact space, which presents great potential in research fields involving vector beams.