Arbitrary Polarization Conversion Dichroism Metasurfaces for All-in-One Full Poincar\'e Sphere Polarizers

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel all-dielectric metasurface that can generate and convert any polarization state on the Poincaré sphere with near-perfect efficiency, enabling compact and versatile polarization control.

Contribution

The authors develop a general design strategy for all-in-one full Poincaré sphere polarizers based on perfect arbitrary polarization conversion dichroism in a monolayer metasurface.

Findings

Achieved near 100% dichroism theoretically and over 90% experimentally for arbitrary polarizations.

Demonstrated direct polarization generation from unpolarized light.

Extended the capabilities of meta-optics for versatile polarization control.

Abstract

The control of polarization, an essential property of light, is of wide scientific and technological interest. Polarizer is an indispensable optical element for direct polarization generations. Except common linear and circular polarizations, however, arbitrary polarization generation heavily resorts to bulky optical components by cascading linear polarizers and waveplates. Here, we present a general strategy for designing all-in-one full Poincar\'e sphere polarizers based on perfect arbitrary polarization conversion dichroism, and realize it in a monolayer all-dielectric metasurface. It allows preferential transmission and conversion of one polarization state locating at an arbitrary position of the Poincar\'e sphere to its handedness-flipped state, while completely blocking its orthogonal state. In contrast to previous work with limited flexibility to only linear or circular polarizations, our method manifests perfect dichroism close to 100% in theory and exceeding 90% in experiments for arbitrary polarization states. Leveraging this tantalizing dichroism, our demonstration of monolithic full Poincar\'e sphere polarization generators directly from unpolarized light can enormously extend the scope of meta-optics and dramatically push the state-of-the-art nanophotonic devices.