Ultimately Thin Metasurface Wave Plates

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that a monolayer metasurface composed of classical uniaxial metamaterials can function as an ultra-thin wave plate, enabling advanced optical device applications through epsilon-near-zero and epsilon-near-pole effects.

Contribution

It introduces a design for an ultimately thin sub-50 nm wave plate using a metasurface with unique epsilon-near-zero and epsilon-near-pole properties along different axes.

Findings

Metasurface acts as a sub-50 nm wave plate.

Effects are robust against non-locality.

Applicable to ultrathin optical devices.

Abstract

Optical properties of a metasurface which can be considered a monolayer of two classical uniaxial metamaterials, parallel-plate and nanorod arrays, are investigated. It is shown that such metasurface acts as an ultimately thin sub-50 nm wave plate. This is achieved via an interplay of epsilon-near-zero and epsilon-near-pole behavior along different axes in the plane of the metasurface allowing for extremely rapid phase difference accumulation in very thin metasurface layers. These effects are shown to not be disrupted by non-locality and can be applied to the design of ultrathin wave plates, Pancharatnam-Berry phase optical elements and plasmon-carrying optical torque wrench devices.