Compact Generation of Airy Beams with C‐Aperture Metasurface

Abstract

A novel method to launch finite power Airy beams based on a metasurface is presented. By tailoring the amplitude and phase of the transmitted fields from a metallic C‐aperture array, launching Airy beams is achieved in free space. The amplitude and phase of the Airy beam profile can be mapped and tailored by tuning only the tilt angles of the aperture. This structure has multifrequency characteristics, which facilitates Airy beam steering because the trajectory of Airy beams is dependent on the wavelength. In addition, the design method can generate Airy beams which have a very compact main lobe (≈2 µm). Computational and experimental results show that proposed metasurface can overcome some limitations of the traditional methods to generate Airy beams. The results can be used for potential applications in integrated optics, beam shaping, biosensing, and next‐generation holography.

Phase Manipulation of Electromagnetic Waves with Metasurfaces and Its Applications in Nanophotonics

“…[164] The bending degree of the generated Airy beam can also be easily controlled by changing the number of nanorods. [165] The nondiffracting Airy beams can also be generated in the terahertz (THz) range and even to be dualwavelength. [165] The nondiffracting Airy beams can also be generated in the terahertz (THz) range and even to be dualwavelength.…”

Broadband Generation of Airy Beams with Hyperbolic Metamaterials

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the generation of Airy beams, it is highly desirable to locally control the amplitude and phase of the output beam simultaneously so as to satisfy the polynary amplitude and binary phase distributions. [15][16][17] Inspired by the flexibility of introducing complex field distributions, [18] various Airy beam generators, either for free-space light, [19][20][21][22][23][24][25] or surface plasmons, [20,[26][27][28][29][30] have been proposed and demonstrated based on metasurfaces. Recent studies have demonstrated that, manipulating the amplitude and phase simultaneously and independently leads to new wavefront manipulation effects and applications.

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“…[15][16][17] Inspired by the flexibility of introducing complex field distributions, [18] various Airy beam generators, either for free-space light, [19][20][21][22][23][24][25] or surface plasmons, [20,[26][27][28][29][30] have been proposed and demonstrated based on metasurfaces. [19,22,24,25] All these meta-atoms provide us with a robust tool to control the wave front of output beams appreciably across a resonance, and hence can be utilized to generate Airy beams. [23] Typically, wavelength-scale engineered gratings, [26,29] graded nanocavity array, [27,28] and nanoslit resonators [20,30] are widely used to generate plasmonic Airy plasmons.…”

“…Different from the metasurface lenses or holograms that merely require phase modulation, controlling both the amplitude and phase simultaneously is highly required to generate high-quality Airy beams that are capable of keeping good nondiffracting nature and stable full width half-maximum (FWHM) during propagation. While promising steps have been taken to broaden the working bandwidth with proper design of C-aperture metasurface, and the working bandwidth of the Airy beams can be somewhat expanded around the resonance frequency, [22,24] the transmission efficiencies are typically lowThe Airy beam has attracted considerable research interest owing to the intriguing diffraction-free, self-accelerating, and self-healing properties, and hence has found numerous applications in photonics. In parallel with the above advances, free-space Airy beams, have been successfully realized by using dielectric nanofins, [21] metal nanorods, [23] and C-shaped apertures.…”

“…Different from the metasurface lenses or holograms that merely require phase modulation, controlling both the amplitude and phase simultaneously is highly required to generate high-quality Airy beams that are capable of keeping good nondiffracting nature and stable full width half-maximum (FWHM) during propagation. [19,22,24,25] All these meta-atoms provide us with a robust tool to control the wave front of output beams appreciably across a resonance, and hence can be utilized to generate Airy beams. In parallel with the above advances, free-space Airy beams, have been successfully realized by using dielectric nanofins, [21] metal nanorods, [23] and C-shaped apertures.…”