Three-dimensional optical holography using a plasmonic metasurface

Abstract

Benefitting from the flexibility in engineering their optical response, metamaterials have been used to achieve control over the propagation of light to an unprecedented level, leading to highly unconventional and versatile optical functionalities compared with their natural counterparts. Recently, the emerging field of metasurfaces, which consist of a monolayer of photonic artificial atoms, has offered attractive functionalities for shaping wave fronts of light by introducing an abrupt interfacial phase discontinuity. Here we realize three-dimensional holography by using metasurfaces made of subwavelength metallic nanorods with spatially varying orientations. The phase discontinuity takes place when the helicity of incident circularly polarized light is reversed. As the phase can be continuously controlled in each subwavelength unit cell by the rod orientation, metasurfaces represent a new route towards high-resolution on-axis three-dimensional holograms with a wide field of view. In addition, the undesired effect of multiple diffraction orders usually accompanying holography is eliminated.

Mechanically Tunable Dielectric Resonator Metasurfaces at Visible Frequencies

“…3 This concept breaks the dependence on phase retardation arising from optical path length in bulky optics and thus allows us to realize exotic functionality, including anomalous reflection and refraction, 4,5 or broadband polarization conversion. 6 As such, metasurfaces promise unparalleled applications in sensing, 2 imaging, 7 and communications. 8 To ensure that the functionality of metasurfaces can be harnessed for real-world applications, the ability to tune their response becomes important.…”

Three-dimensional plasmonic stereoscopic prints in full colour

“…This feature enables high-density information encoding using nanostructures that resonate at different wavelengths, as seen in colour prints with resolutions at the diffraction limit of light 7,8 . By extending this spectral tunability to asymmetric nanostructures, resonances can be tailored to depend on the polarization of incident illumination, for example, linear [9][10][11][12][13] and circular polarizations 14 . Indeed, nanoarrays consisting of gratings 9,10 and cross-shaped antennas 11 have been designed to generate colour variations under orthogonal polarizations of incident light.…”

Engineered pixels using active plasmonic holograms with liquid crystals

“…In these plasmonic holograms, diffraction is produced using the combined plasmonic resonances in arrays of optical antennas and not through the effective behavior of a typical squared pixel or other effective medium approaches [14,15]. It is therefore possible to multiplex different amplitude and phase CGHs with independent polarization and wavelength dependencies within typical pixel areas [11,12,16,17]. However, these static holograms do not provide any modulation capability post-fabrication.…”