Perfect Anomalous Refraction with Metagratings

TL;DR

This paper introduces a design methodology for multilayered metagratings that achieve perfect anomalous refraction, enabling precise control of transmitted waves with passive, lossless structures and no need for full-wave simulations.

Contribution

It extends previous reflect-mode designs to include transmitted fields, deriving analytical relations and practical design procedures for efficient, passive, and lossless metagratings.

Findings

Achieves perfect anomalous refraction efficiency.

Designs can be realized with realistic printed-capacitor loads.

No full-wave simulations required for design process.

Abstract

We present a methodology for designing metagratings for perfect anomalous refraction, based on multilayered loaded wire arrays. In recent work, it has been shown that such structures can implement perfect anomalous deflection and beam splitting in \emph{reflect-mode}, using only a handful of subwavelength meta-atoms per (wavelength-scale) macro-period. Extending previous formulations to enable manipulation of \emph{transmitted} fields as well, we derive analytical relations between the scattered fields, currents induced on the wires, and the individual load impedances, and enforce conditions that guarantee elimination of spurious scattering while retaining a passive and lossless structure. Utilizing our recent results, we demonstrate how the multilayered metagratings can be realized using realistic printed-capacitor loads, whose geometry can be analytically resolved. Thus, this design scheme, which can be fully implemented in MATLAB, prescribes simple physical structures, achieving optimal anomalous refraction efficiency without requiring even a single full-wave simulation. This paves the path for harnessing this novel concept for applications requiring control on transmitted diffraction modes (e.g., lenses), taking advantage of an efficient and rigorous design scheme, and simplified structure.