Manipulation of higher-order Poincaré sphere beams beyond the diffraction limit using single-layer metasurface

Abstract

Control and generation of arbitrary higher-order Poincaré sphere (HOPS) beams have attracted intensive interest because of the potential of extreme optical manipulation using HOPS beams. Here, we experimentally demonstrate the control of focused HOPS beams with multi-foci of 22% smaller than the diffraction limit via a single-layer metasurface.
Since the optical tweezer based on a highly focused laser beam was invented in 1970 and awarded the Nobel Prize in 2018, it has been explored for manipulating microscale and nanoscale particles in both over-damped and under-damped regimes, which makes it possible to move biological and chemical molecules via a contactless way, to study light-matter interaction, and to realize a macro quantum system. The on-chip generation and manipulation of HOPS beams would effectively extend the dimension (2D to 3D) and complexity (single particle to multiple particles) of optical manipulation.
Here, we show that a single-layer dielectric metasurface can be used for simultaneously manipulating and highly focusing the HOPS beam via manipulating the incident laser beam’s polarization. A metasurface with a diameter of 1.2mm and a numerical aperture of 0.9 is fabricated following a CMOS-compatible process. Then, it is measured in a custom-built microscope system with a camera working at 1550nm.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Chuang Sun: orcid.org/0000-0001-7024-1916

ORCID for Kian Shen Kiang: orcid.org/0000-0002-7326-909X

ORCID for Jize Yan: orcid.org/0000-0002-2886-2847

ORCID for Jun-Yu Ou: orcid.org/0000-0001-8028-6130

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