Twisted two-dimensional material stacks for polarization optics

TL;DR

This paper introduces twisted stacks of anisotropic van der Waals materials that can be electrically tuned to create versatile polarization optical elements with various complex Jones matrix properties.

Contribution

It demonstrates a novel approach to dynamically control light polarization using reconfigurable two-dimensional material stacks with diverse optical functionalities.

Findings

Stack can function as arbitrary birefringent wave-plate or polarizer.

Electrostatic control enables tuning of polarization transformation.

Stack can operate as four different polarizers for Stokes polarimetry.

Abstract

The ability to control light polarization state is critically important for diverse applications in information processing, telecommunications, and spectroscopy. Here, we propose that a stack of anisotropic van der Waals materials can facilitate the building of optical elements with Jones matrices of unitary, Hermitian, non-normal, singular, degenerate, and defective classes. We show that the twisted stack with electrostatic control can function as arbitrary-birefringent wave-plate or arbitrary polarizer with tunable degree of non-normality, which in turn give access to plethora of polarization transformers including rotators, pseudorotators, symmetric and ambidextrous polarizers. Moreover, we discuss an electrostatic-reconfigurable stack which can be tuned to operate as four different polarizers and be used for Stokes polarimetry.