Metasurfaces for manipulating terahertz waves

 

The associated THz responses include focusing, holograms, polarization modulation, special beams and active controlling. Credit: Xiaofei Zang, Bingshuang Yao, Lin Chen, Jingya Xie, Xuguang Guo, Alexei V. Balakin, Alexander P. Shkurinov, and Songlin Zhuang

https://phys.org/news/2021-03-metasurfaces-terahertz.html

by Chinese Academy of Sciences

THz waves have a plethora of applications ranging from biomedical and medical examinations, imaging, environmental monitoring, to wireless communications, because of abundant spectral information, low photon energy, strong penetrability, and shorter wavelength. THz waves with technological advances not only determined by high-efficiency sources and detectors but also decided by a variety of high-quality THz components/functional devices. However, traditional THz devices should be thick enough to realize the desired wave-manipulating functions, hindering the development of THz integrated systems and applications. Although metamaterials have shown groundbreaking discoveries due to tunable electric permittivity and magnetic permeability of a meta-atom, they are limited by technical challenges of fabrication and high loss of the metal-based unit cell.

In a new paper published in Light: Advanced Manufacturing, a team of scientists, led by Professor Songlin Zhuang from Terahertz Technology Innovation Research Institute, University of shanghai for Science and Technology, and co-workers have summarized recent advancements of metasurfaces for the manipulation of THz waves. These ultra-compact devices with unusual functionalities render metasurface devices very attractive for applications such as imaging, encryption, information modulation and THz communications.

Actually, metasurfaces typically consist of planar antennas that enable predesigned EM responses. The antennas are made of metals or traditional high-refractive index dielectrics that can be easily fabricated based on standard fabrication processes. In addition, metasurfaces with functionality in manipulating EM waves are dependent on abrupt phase changes at planar antenna interfaces, and thus the thickness of metasurfaces is much thinner than the incident wavelength. Metasurfaces can locally control the wavefront of EM waves at subwavelength resolution, leading to various practical applications such as metalenses, waveplates, vortex beam generators, beam steering and holograms. The ultrathin nature of metasurfaces, ease of fabrication, and subwavelength resolution in manipulation of EM waves make metasurfaces ideal candidates for THz device miniaturization (ultra-compact THz devices) and system integration.

The metasurface-based approach for manipulatig THz waves enables remarkable contributions in designing ultra-thin/ultra-compact and tunable THz components. The main advantages/contributions of THz metasurfaces can be concluded as follows: (1) THz components with reduced size: The functionalities of focusing, OAM, and polarization conversion realized by metasurfaces can be traditionally obtained by using a THz lens, helical phase plate, and half-wave (or quarter-wave) plate, respectively; (2) THz components with multiple functions: The traditional THz devices, e.g. THz lenses, waveplates, etc, always show a single function. Metasurfaces not only provide a flexible platform to realize ultra-thin/ultra-compact THz devices with single function, but also enable the unprecedented capability in designing multifunctional THz devices. (3) THz components with tunable function: Metasurfaces combined with VO2, graphene, etc, open a new avenue for designing THz components with active functions.

In conclusion, metasurfaces with planar structures can locally modify the wavefront of THz waves at subwavelength resolution. Metasurfaces not only provide an ultra-compact platform for manipulating the wavefront of THz waves, but also generate a plethora of applications that are difficult to achieve with conventional functional devices. As an overview, the recent developments of metasurfaces for manipulating THz waves were presented in this paper, and this progress report may open a new avenue to design ultra-thin or ultra-compact THz functional devices and systems.

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Metasurfaces for manipulating terahertz waves

                                              
LIGHT PUBLISHING CENTER, CHANGCHUN INSTITUTE OF OPTICS, FINE MECHANICS AND PHYSICS, CAS

The associated THz responses include focusing, holograms, polarization modulation, special beams and active controlling.

CREDIT

by Xiaofei Zang, Bingshuang Yao, Lin Chen, Jingya Xie, Xuguang Guo, Alexei V. Balakin, Alexander P. Shkurinov, and Songlin Zhuang

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-03/lpcc-mfm032221.php

THz waves have a plethora of applications ranging from biomedical and medical examinations, imaging, environment monitoring, to wireless communications, because of the abundant spectral information, low photon energy, strong penetrability, and shorter wavelength. THz waves with technological advances not only determined by the high-efficiency sources and detectors but also decided by a variety of the high-quality THz components/functional devices. However, traditional THz devices should be thick enough to realize the desired wave-manipulating functions, hindering the development of THz integrated systems and applications. Although metamaterials have been shown groundbreaking discoveries due to the tunable electric permittivity and magnetic permeability of a meta-atom, they are limited to technical challenges of fabrication and high loss of the metal-based unit cell.

In a new paper published in Light: Advanced Manufacturing, a team of scientists, led by Professor Songlin Zhuang from Terahertz Technology Innovation Research Institute, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, and co-workers have summarized the recent advancements of metasurfaces for the manipulation of THz waves. These ultra-compact devices with unusual functionalities render metasurface devices very attractive for applications such as imaging, encryption, information modulation and THz communications.

Actually, metasurfaces typically consist of planar antennas that enable predesigned EM responses. The antennas are made by metals or traditional high-refractive index dielectrics that can be easily fabricated based on the standard fabrication process. In addition, metasurfaces with the functionality in manipulating EM waves are dependent on the abrupt phase changes at planar antenna interfaces, and thus the thickness of metasurfaces is much thinner than the incident wavelength. Metasurfaces can locally control the wavefront of EM waves at subwavelength resolution, leading to various practical applications such as metalens, waveplates, vortex beam generators, beam steering and holograms. The ultrathin nature of metasurfaces, the ease of fabrication, and the subwavelength resolution in manipulating of EM waves make metasurfaces ideal candidates for THz device miniaturization (ultra-compact THz devices) and system integration.

The metasurface-based approach for manipulatig THz waves enables remarkable contributions in designing ultra-thin/ultra-compact and tunable THz components. The main advantages/contributions of THz metasurfaces can be concluded as follows: (1) THz components with reduced size: The functionalities of focusing, OAM, and polarization conversion realized by metasurfaces can be traditionally obtained by using a THz lens, helical phase plate, and half-wave (or quarter-wave) plate, respectively; (2) THz components with multiple functions: The traditional THz devices, e.g. THz lenses, waveplates, etc..., are always show a single function. Metasurfaces not only provide a flexible platform to realize ultra-thin/ultra-compact THz devices with single function, but also enable the unprecedented capability in designing multifunctional THz devices. (3) THz components with tunable function: Metasurfaces combined with VO2, graphene, etc, open a new avenue for designing THz components with active functions.

In conclusion, metasurfaces with planar structures can locally modify the wavefront of THz waves at subwavelength resolution. Metasurfaces not only provide an ultra-compact platform for manipulating the wavefront of THz waves, but also generate a plethora of applications that are difficult to achieve with conventional functional devices. As an overview, the recent developments of metasurfaces for manipulating THz waves were presented in this paper, and this progress report may open a new avenue to design ultra-thin or ultra-compact THz functional devices and systems.

Abstract-Achromatic terahertz Airy beam generation with dielectric metasurfaces

 

Qingqing Cheng , Juncheng Wang, Ling Ma, Zhixiong Shen, Jing Zhang, Xiaoying Zheng ,Tao Chen, Ye Yu, Dong Yu, Qiong He, Wei Hu, Tao Li, Songlin Zhuang,  Lei Zhou

https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals/nanoph/ahead-of-print/article-10.1515-nanoph-2020-0536/article-10.1515-nanoph-2020-0536.xml?rskey=WV2s5h&result=7&tab_body=abstract

Airy beams exhibit intriguing properties such as nonspreading, self-bending, and self-healing and have attracted considerable recent interest because of their many potential applications in photonics, such as to beam focusing, light-sheet microscopy, and biomedical imaging. However, previous approaches to generate Airy beams using photonic structures have suffered from severe chromatic problems arising from strong frequency dispersion of the scatterers. Here, we design and fabricate a metasurface composed of silicon posts for the frequency range 0.4–0.8 THz in transmission mode, and we experimentally demonstrate achromatic Airy beams exhibiting autofocusing properties. We further show numerically that a generated achromatic Airy-beam-based metalens exhibits self-healing properties that are immune to scattering by particles and that it also possesses a larger depth of focus than a traditional metalens. Our results pave the way to the realization of flat photonic devices for applications to noninvasive biomedical imaging and light-sheet microscopy, and we provide a numerical demonstration of a device protocol.

Abstract-A Multi‐Foci Metalens with Polarization‐Rotated Focal Points

Xiaofei Zang, Hongzhen Ding,   Yuttana Intaravanne,   Lin Chen,   Yan Peng,   Jingya Xie,   Qinghong Ke,   Alexey V. Balakin,   Alexander P. Shkurinov,   Xianzhong Chen, Yiming Zhu,   Songlin Zhuang,

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/lpor.201900182

Benefiting from the unprecedented capability of metasurfaces in the manipulation of light propagation, metalenses can provide novel functions that are very challenging or impossible to achieve with conventional lenses. Here, an approach to realizing multi‐foci metalenses is proposed and experimentally demonstrated with polarization‐rotated focal points based on geometric metasurfaces. Multi‐foci metalenses with various polarization rotation directions are developed using silicon pillars with spatially variant orientations. The focusing characteristic and longitudinal polarization‐dependent imaging capability are demonstrated upon the illumination of a linearly polarized light beam. The uniqueness of this multi‐foci metalens with polarization‐rotated focal points may open a new avenue for imaging, sensing, and information processing.

Abstract-Broadband achromatic metalens in terahertz regime

Qingqing Cheng, Meilin Ma, Dong Yu, Zhixiong Shen, Jingya Xie, Juncheng Wang, Nianxi Xu, Hanming Guo, Wei Hu, Shuming Wang, Tao Li, Songlin Zhuang



https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2095927319304621

Achromatic focusing is essential for broadband operation, which has recently been realized from visible to infrared wavelengths using a metasurface. Similarly, multi-terahertz functional devices can be encoded in a desired metasurface phase profile. However, metalenses suffer from larger chromatic aberrations because of the intrinsic dispersion of each unit element. Here, we propose an achromatic metalens with C-shaped unit elements working from 0.3 to 0.8 THz with a bandwidth of approximately 91% over the centre frequency. The designed metalens possesses a high working efficiency of more than 68% at the peak and a relatively high numerical aperture of 0.385. We further demonstrate the robustness of our C-shaped metalens, considering lateral shape deformations and deviations in the etching depth. Our metalens design opens an avenue for future applications of terahertz meta-devices in spectroscopy, time-of-flight tomography and hyperspectral imaging systems.

Abstract-Surface-phonon-polariton-mediated photon response of terahertz quantum-well infrared photodetectors

DiXiang Shao, XuGuang Guo, YiMing Zhu, SongLin Zhuang, ZhangLong Fu,  JunCheng Cao

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6463/aaeb77/meta

A surface-phonon-polariton (SPHP)-mediated photon response near the longitudinal optical (LO) phonon frequency of GaAs is investigated in a terahertz GaAs/AlGaAs quantum-well infrared photodetector, integrated with a one-dimensional metal grating. For a contrast device without a grating coupler, no SPHP-related signature is found in the photocurrent spectrum, because the incident radiation from free space cannot excite the SPHP, due to the mismatch of momentum. The intensity of the electric field component along the growth direction of the device absorption layer is numerically calculated. The results show that the photocurrent response peaks near the LO phonon frequency band (8.8–9.0 THz) are attributed to the local field enhancement induced by SPHP. Our results are useful to realize high performance SPHP-mediated terahertz photodetectors and other related terahertz devices.

Abstract-Metasurface for multi-channel terahertz beam splitters and polarization rotators

XiaoFei Zang, HanHong Gong, Zhen Li, JingYa Xie, QingQing Cheng,   Lin Chen,   Alexander P. Shkurinov, YiMing Zhu, SongLin Zhuang,

https://aip.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1063/1.5028401

Terahertz beam splitters and polarization rotators are two typical devices with wide applications ranging from terahertz communication to system integration. However, they are faced with severe challenges in manipulating THz waves in multiple channels, which is desirable for system integration and device miniaturization. Here, we propose a method to design ultra-thin multi-channel THz beam splitters and polarization rotators simultaneously. The reflected beams are divided into four beams with nearly the same density under illumination of linear-polarized THz waves, while the polarization of reflected beams in each channel is modulated with a rotation angle or invariable with respect to the incident THz waves, leading to the multi-channel polarization rotator (multiple polarization rotation in the reflective channels) and beam splitter, respectively. Reflective metasurfaces, created by patterning metal-rods with different orientations on a polyimide film, were fabricated and measured to demonstrate these characteristics. The proposed approach provides an efficient way of controlling polarization of THz waves in various channels, which significantly simplifies THz functional devices and the experimental system.

Abstract-Clue to a thorough understanding of terahertz pulse generation by femtosecond laser filamentation

Jiayu Zhao, Weiwei Liu, Shichang Li, Dan Lu, Yizhu Zhang, Yan Peng, Yiming Zhu, and Songlin Zhuang

https://www.osapublishing.org/prj/abstract.cfm?uri=prj-6-4-296

In this work, it has been demonstrated that in order to fully understand the terahertz (THz) pulse generation process during femtosecond laser filamentation, the interaction between THz wave and air plasma has to be taken into account. This interaction is mainly associated with the spatial confinement of the THz pulse by the plasma column, which could be described by the one-dimensional negative dielectric (1DND) waveguide model. By combining the 1DND model with the conventional four-wave mixing (4WM) and photocurrent (PC) models, the variation of THz spectral amplitude and width obtained in experiments could be better understood. Finally, a three-step procedure, with 1DND bridging 4WM and PC processes, has been established for the first time to describe the underlying mechanism of THz radiation from plasma sources.

© 2018 Chinese Laser Press

Abstract-Strong Spatial Confinement of Terahertz Wave inside Femtosecond Laser Filament

Jiayu Zhao, Wei Chu, Zhi Wang, Yan Peng, Cheng Gong, Lie Lin, Yiming Zhu, Weiwei Liu, Ya Cheng, Songlin Zhuang, and Zhizhan Xu

ACS Photonics, Just Accepted Manuscript

DOI: 10.1021/acsphotonics.6b00512

Publication Date (Web): November 8, 2016

Copyright © 2016 American Chemical Society

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsphotonics.6b00512

In this paper, a new experimental phenomenon is demonstrated. During the femtosecond laser filamentation, the generated terahertz (THz) pulse has been found to be strongly confined inside the plasma channel, reaching a spatial diameter of a few tens of micrometres. It has been attributed to the formation of a plasma negative dielectric waveguide induced by the transverse inhomogeneous plasma density distribution. The new experimental phenomenon will renew the understanding of the THz wave generation and propagation dynamics during the femtosecond laser and air plasma interaction. Due to this strong spatial confinement, THz electric field strength could be enhanced by orders of magnitude, potentially providing a new approach to perform THz nonlinear optics with low laser energy.

Abstract-Excitation of dark multipolar plasmonic resonances at terahertz frequencies

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• Lin Chen
• , YuMing Wei
• , XiaoFei Zang
• , YiMing Zhu
•  & SongLin Zhuang

http://www.nature.com/articles/srep22027

We experimentally observe the excitation of dark multipolar spoof localized surface plasmon resonances in a hybrid structure consisting of a corrugated metallic disk coupled with a C-shaped dipole resonator. The uncoupled corrugated metallic disk only supports a dipolar resonance in the transmission spectrum due to perfect symmetry of the structure. However, the dark multipolar spoof localized surface plasmon resonances emerge when coupled with a bright C-shaped resonator which is placed in the vicinity of the corrugated metallic disk. These excited multipolar resonances show minimum influence on the coupling distance between the C-shaped resonator and corrugated metallic disk. The resonance frequencies of the radiative modes are controlled by varying the angle of the C-shaped resonator and the inner disk radius, both of which play dominant roles in the excitation of the spoof localized surface plasmons. Observation of such a transition from the dark to radiative nature of multipolar spoof localized plasmon resonances would find potential applications in terahertz based resonant plasmonic and metamaterial devices.

Abstract-Ultra-broadband terahertz perfect absorber by exciting multi-order diffractions in a double-layered grating structure

Ultra-broadband terahertz perfect absorber by exciting multi-order diffractions in a double-layered grating structure Yan Peng, XiaoFei Zang, YiMing Zhu, Cheng Shi, Lin Chen, Bin Cai, and SongLin Zhuang  »View Author Affiliations

http://www.opticsinfobase.org/oe/abstract.cfm?uri=oe-23-3-2032

Optics Express, Vol. 23, Issue 3, pp. 2032-2039 (2015)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1364/OE.23.002032

View Full Text Article

Enhanced HTML    Acrobat PDF (1993 KB)

Terahertz (THz) perfect absorber, as a useful functional device, has attracted considerable attention. Traditional metamaterial perfect absorbers are usually in response to single-frequency or multi-frequency owing to the resonance features of the metal-based sub-wavelength structure. In this paper, a simple double-layered doped-silicon grating structure was designed to realize an ultra-broadband and polarization-independent THz perfect absorber. Both theoretical and experimental results demonstrate that the incident THz waves ranging from 0.59 to 2.58 THz can be efficiently absorbed with an absorptivity of more than 95% and a bandwidth of about 2.0 THz. The excellent characteristic of this broad-bandwidth THz perfect absorber is mainly resulted from the air gap mode resonance together with the first-order and the second-order grating diffractions.

© 2015 Optical Society of America