Beam-Size Invariant Spectropolarimeters Using Gap-Plasmon Metasurfaces

TL;DR

This paper presents a compact, beam-size invariant plasmonic spectropolarimeter that can simultaneously measure polarization and wavelength, leveraging gap-plasmon metasurfaces for high-performance, real-time optical analysis.

Contribution

The authors design and demonstrate a novel chip-sized spectropolarimeter with beam-size invariant capabilities using gap-plasmon metasurfaces, enabling calibration-free polarization analysis across different beam sizes.

Findings

Operates in 750-950nm wavelength range.

Beam-size invariant polarization analysis demonstrated.

High angular dispersion and polarization selectivity achieved.

Abstract

Metasurfaces enable exceptional control over the light with surface-confined planar components, offering the fascinating possibility of very dense integration and miniaturization in photonics. Here, we design, fabricate and experimentally demonstrate chip-size plasmonic spectropolarimeters for simultaneous polarization state and wavelength determination. Spectropolarimeters, consisting of three gap-plasmon phase-gradient metasurfaces that occupy 120{\deg} circular sectors each, diffract normally incident light to six predesigned directions, whose azimuthal angles are proportional to the light wavelength, while contrasts in the corresponding diffraction intensities provide a direct measure of the incident polarization state through retrieval of the associated Stokes parameters. The proof-of-concept 96-{\mu}m-diameter spectropolarimeter operating in the wavelength range of 750-950nm exhibits the expected polarization selectivity and high angular dispersion. Moreover, we show that, due to the circular-sector design, polarization analysis can be conducted for optical beams of different diameters without prior calibration, demonstrating thereby the beam-size invariant functionality. The proposed spectropolarimeters are compact, cost-effective, robust, and promise high-performance real-time polarization and spectral measurements.