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Synthetic vector optical fields with spatial and temporal tunability

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Abstract

As an intrinsic nature of light, polarization plays a critical role in the vectorial characteristic of optical fields. Vector optical fields with an inhomogeneous polarization distribution show many exotic phenomena and applications not existing in scalar optical fields. Existing polarization optics, however, mainly focuses on the manipulation of polarization distribution on a single transverse plane. Here, we propose a synthetic approach to realize polarization manipulation with spatial and temporal degrees. The underlying mechanism relies on decoupling two orthogonal polarization states through asymmetric photonic spin-orbit interactions to obtain customer-tailored phase and amplitude difference in both transverse and longitudinal space, thereby changing the resulting polarization distribution at will in three-dimensional (3D) space. Remarkably, a longitudinally varied cylindrical vector field is experimentally demonstrated by a monolayer metasurface, in which the polarization distribution switches continuously and periodically between radial and azimuthal polarization. Furthermore, the vector field can be dynamically tuned by rotating the incident polarization state. Our work extends polarization optics from two-dimensional space to 3D space, allowing the arbitrary generation and manipulation of 3D vector optical fields with temporal tunability.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Optical Technologies on Nano-Fabrication and Micro-Engineering, Institute of Optics and Electronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu, 610209, China

    Fei Zhang, MingBo Pu, YingHui Guo, XiaoLiang Ma, Xiong Li, Ping Gao & XianGang Luo

  2. School of Optoelectronics, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    MingBo Pu, YingHui Guo, XiaoLiang Ma, Xiong Li & XianGang Luo

Authors
  1. Fei Zhang
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  2. MingBo Pu
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  7. XianGang Luo
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to MingBo Pu or XianGang Luo.

Additional information

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2019YFF0216400), Sichuan Science and Technology Program (Grant No. 2021ZYCD002), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No. 2021T140670), and National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 62175242, and U20A20217).

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Zhang, F., Pu, M., Guo, Y. et al. Synthetic vector optical fields with spatial and temporal tunability. Sci. China Phys. Mech. Astron. 65, 254211 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11433-021-1851-0

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