Arbitrary hybrid and higher-order Poincaré sphere beams generation by metasurfaces via a unified design framework

Abstract

The unique phase profile and polarisation distribution of the vector vortex beam have been a subject of increasing interest in classical and quantum optics. The development of higher-order Poincaré sphere and hybrid-order Poincaré sphere has provided a systematic description of vector vortex beams. However, the generation of arbitrary vector vortex beams on a higher-order and a hybrid-order Poincaré sphere via a metasurface lacks a unified design framework, despite numerous reported approaches. This paper presents a novel, unified general design framework incorporating all design parameters (e.g., focal length, orders) of arbitrary higher-order Poincaré sphere and hybrid-order Poincaré sphere beams into a single equation. In proof-of-concept experiments, we experimentally demonstrated four metasurfaces to generate arbitrary beams on the 5th-order higher-order Poincaré sphere (non-focused and tightly-focused, NA 0.89), 0-2 order and 0-1 order hybrid-order Poincaré sphere. We showed higher-order Poincaré sphere beams' propagation and focusing properties, the super-resolution focusing characteristics of the 1st-order cylindrical vector vortex beams, and the different focusing properties of integer-order and fractional-order cylindrical vector vortex beams. The simplicity and feasibility of the proposed design framework make it a potential catalyst for arbitrary vector vortex beams using metasurfaces in applications of optical imaging, communication, and optical trapping.

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Identifiers

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

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

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

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