Trichannel Spin-Selective Metalenses

Nano Lett. 2023 Aug 9;23(15):6958-6965. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.3c01588. Epub 2023 Jul 21.

Abstract

Metalenses have the potential to revolutionize optical devices into the next generation of consumer devices. Through new inventive strategies, metalenses with advanced functionalities have been released to integrate multiple responses into a single flat device. Here, we design metalenses that are sensitive to the incident spin angular momentum to provide three distinct modes based on the handedness of the incident and transmitted light. Propagation phase is employed to encode a hyperbolic lens phase to the metalens, while geometric phase is exploited for additional spin-selective properties. We experimentally demonstrate two different metalenses: the co-polarized channels function as a standard metalens, while the cross-polarized channels (1) deflect and (2) introduce orbital angular momentum to the transmitted light. We experimentally characterize the metalenses and prove their use for spin-selective imaging of visible light. We envision that such trichannel metalenses could be employed in chiral bioimaging, optical computing, and computer vision.

Keywords: Edge-Enhancement; Imaging; Metalens; Optical Computing; SAM-Selectivity.