Metamaterials are artificially fabricated materials that allow for the control of light and acoustic waves in a manner that is not possible in nature. This Review covers the recent developments in the study of so-called metasurfaces, which offer the possibility of controlling light with ultrathin, planar optical components. Conventional optical components such as lenses, waveplates and holograms rely on light propagation over distances much larger than the wavelength to shape wavefronts. In this way substantial changes of the amplitude, phase or polarization of light waves are gradually accumulated along the optical path. This Review focuses on recent developments on flat, ultrathin optical components dubbed 'metasurfaces' that produce abrupt changes over the scale of the free-space wavelength in the phase, amplitude and/or polarization of a light beam. Metasurfaces are generally created by assembling arrays of miniature, anisotropic light scatterers (that is, resonators such as optical antennas). The spacing between antennas and their dimensions are much smaller than the wavelength. As a result the metasurfaces, on account of Huygens principle, are able to mould optical wavefronts into arbitrary shapes with subwavelength resolution by introducing spatial variations in the optical response of the light scatterers. Such gradient metasurfaces go beyond the well-established technology of frequency selective surfaces made of periodic structures and are extending to new spectral regions the functionalities of conventional microwave and millimetre-wave transmit-arrays and reflect-arrays. Metasurfaces can also be created by using ultrathin films of materials with large optical losses. By using the controllable abrupt phase shifts associated with reflection or transmission of light waves at the interface between lossy materials, such metasurfaces operate like optically thin cavities that strongly modify the light spectrum. Technology opportunities in various spectral regions and their potential advantages in replacing existing optical components are discussed.

Flat Optics With Designer Metasurfaces

The term photonic crystals appears because of the analogy between electron waves in crystals and the light waves in artificial periodic dielectric structures. During the recent years the investigation of one-, two-and three-dimensional periodic structures has attracted a widespread attention of the world optics community because of great potentiality of such structures in advanced applied optical fields. The interest in periodic structures has been stimulated by the fast development of semiconductor technology that now allows the fabrication of artificial structures, whose period is comparable with the wavelength of light in the visible and infrared ranges.

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/6354/16969/00781867.pdf

Photonic crystals

The ideal material for nanophotonic applications will have a large refractive index at optical frequencies, respond to both the electric and magnetic fields of light, support large optical chirality and anisotropy, confine and guide light at the nanoscale, and be able to modify the phase and amplitude of incoming radiation in a fraction of a wavelength. Artificial electromagnetic media, or metamaterials, based on metallic or polar dielectric nanostructures can provide many of these properties by coupling light to free electrons (plasmons) or phonons (phonon polaritons), respectively, but at the inevitable cost of significant energy dissipation and reduced device efficiency. Recently, however, there has been a shift in the approach to nanophotonics. Low-loss electromagnetic responses covering all four quadrants of possible permittivities and permeabilities have been achieved using completely transparent and high-refractive-index dielectric building blocks. Moreover, an emerging class of all-dielectric metamaterials consisting of anisotropic crystals has been shown to support large refractive index contrast between orthogonal polarizations of light. These advances have revived the exciting prospect of integrating exotic electromagnetic effects in practical photonic devices, to achieve, for example, ultrathin and efficient optical elements, and realize the long-standing goal of subdiffraction confinement and guiding of light without metals. In this Review, we present a broad outline of the whole range of electromagnetic effects observed using all-dielectric metamaterials: high-refractive-index nanoresonators, metasurfaces, zero-index metamaterials and anisotropic metamaterials. Finally, we discuss current challenges and future goals for the field at the intersection with quantum, thermal and silicon photonics, as well as biomimetic metasurfaces.

All-dielectric metamaterials

Photonic metamaterials are man-made structures composed of tailored micro- or nanostructured metallodielectric subwavelength building blocks. This deceptively simple yet powerful concept allows the realization of many new and unusual optical properties, such as magnetism at optical frequencies, negative refractive index, large positive refractive index, zero reflection through impedance matching, perfect absorption, giant circular dichroism and enhanced nonlinear optical properties. Possible applications of metamaterials include ultrahigh-resolution imaging systems, compact polarization optics and cloaking devices. This Review describes recent progress in the fabrication of three-dimensional metamaterial structures and discusses some of the remaining challenges.

Past achievements and future challenges in the development of three-dimensional photonic metamaterials

Metamaterials are composed of periodic subwavelength metal/dielectric structures that resonantly couple to the electric and/or magnetic components of the incident electromagnetic fields, exhibiting properties that are not found in nature. This class of micro- and nano-structured artificial media have attracted great interest during the past 15 years and yielded ground-breaking electromagnetic and photonic phenomena. However, the high losses and strong dispersion associated with the resonant responses and the use of metallic structures, as well as the difficulty in fabricating the micro- and nanoscale 3D structures, have hindered practical applications of metamaterials. Planar metamaterials with subwavelength thickness, or metasurfaces, consisting of single-layer or few-layer stacks of planar structures, can be readily fabricated using lithography and nanoprinting methods, and the ultrathin thickness in the wave propagation direction can greatly suppress the undesirable losses. Metasurfaces enable a spatially varying optical response (e.g. scattering amplitude, phase, and polarization), mold optical wavefronts into shapes that can be designed at will, and facilitate the integration of functional materials to accomplish active control and greatly enhanced nonlinear response. This paper reviews recent progress in the physics of metasurfaces operating at wavelengths ranging from microwave to visible. We provide an overview of key metasurface concepts such as anomalous reflection and refraction, and introduce metasurfaces based on the Pancharatnam-Berry phase and Huygens' metasurfaces, as well as their use in wavefront shaping and beam forming applications, followed by a discussion of polarization conversion in few-layer metasurfaces and their related properties. An overview of dielectric metasurfaces reveals their ability to realize unique functionalities coupled with Mie resonances and their low ohmic losses. We also describe metasurfaces for wave guidance and radiation control, as well as active and nonlinear metasurfaces. Finally, we conclude by providing our opinions of opportunities and challenges in this rapidly developing research field.

A review of metasurfaces: physics and applications.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/adpr.202100034

Quasi-Static and Time-Modulated Optical Phased Arrays: Beamforming Analysis and Comparative Study

A dual-band multilayer shared aperture antenna (SAA) is presented, which can recognize anomalous two-dimensional beam steering simultaneously at two distinct operating wavelengths lie in near-infrared (NIR) (λ1=1055  nm) and visible (λ2=700  nm) spectra. The supercell consists of one large cross-shaped resonator antenna (top layer) and a 2×2 square-shaped patches (bottom layer). This compact bifunctional dual-band reflectarray SAA can steer the main beam toward relatively large angles (≈40  deg) in both θ- and ϕ-planes at dual-frequency bands. The state-of-the-art techniques in antenna design are exploited to attain the minimized aperture size and negligible coupling among NIR and visible arrays. The overall height of the antenna is 275 nm (≈0.25λ1). The presented structure is customizable in form and can easily be scaled to other frequency ratios.

Shared aperture antenna for simultaneous two-dimensional beam steering at near-infrared and visible

A time-modulated metasurface integrated with indium-tin-oxide (ITO) can dynamically manipulate the scattered light by imparting dispersionless phase discontinuities with 2π span on wavefronts of the generated sidebands. However, maximal frequency conversion efficiency is restricted to a narrow bandwidth at the vicinity of the resonant wavelength due to the dispersive nature of light–matter interactions in such ITO-integrated metasurfaces. Herein, a multiwavelength time-modulated meta-molecule is numerically investigated, which consists of four metal–insulator–metal meta-atoms that are judiciously designed to support four resonant wavelengths at the near-infrared regime. The metasurface platform allows for application of four sets of independent radio-frequency signals to each meta-molecule, which are optimized to excite the output spectra with dominant first-order up-modulated sidebands. Individual modulation of each meta-atom leads to efficient sideband generation at resonant wavelength corresponding to the biased meta-atom. Nevertheless, the conversion efficiency decays rapidly at off-resonant wavelengths. Concurrent modulation of all four meta-atoms within the meta-molecule configuration offers a pathway to simultaneously generate dominant sidebands at all resonant wavelengths while enhancing the frequency conversion efficiency at inter-resonant wavelengths. As the potential application, beam-steering at the up-modulated sideband by both individually and simultaneously biased meta-atoms is demonstrated. It is revealed that simultaneous modulation enables continuous dynamic light deflection over a broad spectrum spanning on 1–1.8 μm, while the steering angle of the wavelengths changes in the range of 34°–85°. Broadband continuous beam-scanning is a non-trivial task that cannot be accomplished by a quasi-static metasurface relying on dispersive resonant phase shift, which hinders simultaneous implementation of linear phase gradients at all incident wavelengths.

/pdf/broadband-continuous-beam-steering-with-time-modulated-27ty0ei9k6.pdf

Broadband continuous beam-steering with time-modulated metasurfaces in the near-infrared spectral regime

In this paper, based on the recently introduced concept of time‐varying media, an alternative approach is presented for controlling the compression ratio of an optical pulse in the near‐infrared regime via two all‐dielectric transmissive metasurfaces consisting of a zigzag array of silicon‐based elliptical nanodisks. Upon introducing in‐plane asymmetries and under normal incidence, the supported symmetry‐protected bound‐state in the continuum resonant mode collapses into two Fano resonances, which can be spectrally overlapped to satisfy the first Kerker's condition. To acquire an amplified signal, the desired chirp is applied to the incident pulse via a purely temporal waveform that modulates the optical response of the first layer, while the required group delay dispersion is imparted to the phase‐modulated pulse by the second metasurface in order to compress its temporal distribution. Following such a configuration, the temporal duration of the output pulse decreases from 25 to 15 ps, leading to a peak intensity enhancement of 50%. On account of time‐varying features of the first metasurface, the instantaneous frequency of the chirped light can be controlled dynamically, giving rise to the active tuning of the peak intensity from 0% up to 200%.

Optical Pulse Compression Assisted by High‐Q Time‐Modulated Transmissive Metasurfaces

In this study, a unique method for designing low-cost, energy-efficient integrated antenna operating in 57-64 GHz band is proposed. The design utilises an artificial surface called reactive impedance surface (RIS) to enhance the antenna radiation efficiency. RIS substrate demonstrates unique potential in terms of minimising the size, reduced coupling between the antenna and silicon substrate and hence, lowering the wave penetration through the lossy substrate and finally achieving wider bandwidth and higher efficiency. This artificial surface is composed of two-dimensional periodic square patches printed on a thin metal-backed dielectric substrate which offers an imaginary impedance performance. Design characterisation, simulation, fabrication and measurement are provided and the results show an enhanced directivity with suppressed back radiation compared with similar works.

https://ietresearch.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1049/iet-map.2011.0622

Hossein Mosallaei

Papers

Quasi-Static and Time-Modulated Optical Phased Arrays: Beamforming Analysis and Comparative Study

Shared aperture antenna for simultaneous two-dimensional beam steering at near-infrared and visible

Broadband continuous beam-steering with time-modulated metasurfaces in the near-infrared spectral regime

Optical Pulse Compression Assisted by High‐Q Time‐Modulated Transmissive Metasurfaces

Radiation‐efficient 60 GHz on‐chip dipole antenna realised by reactive impedance metasurface