Dual-Functional Metaoptics for Advanced Arbitrary Light Shaping

Over the past ten years, structured light beams have been crucial in advancing applications across life sciences and information and communication technologies. At the same time, complex light manipulation has led to the development of innovative optical tools that can control multiple degrees of freedom of light beams in a compact, efficient, and scalable manner. Metasurfaces have emerged as a powerful technology for advanced light manipulation, offering unprecedented levels of integration and density of functionalities. Their ability to manipulate phase, polarization, and intensity allows for complex optical operations using simple and compact designs. In this work, we present our latest results in the design and fabrication of advanced metaoptics for the generation and control of highly structured vectorial beams. Specifically, we propose the design, fabrication, and testing of new dual-functional silicon metaoptics that generate custom combinations of orbital and spin angular momenta for complete 3D light control [1]–[4]. The subwavelength meta-structures, called meta-atoms, are designed in various shapes and sizes to provide combined control of amplitude, geometric and dynamic phases (Fig. 1). The intertwined control of spin and spatial structure allows leveraging polarization as a parameter for the dynamic tuning of the intensity distribution. These new devices have potential applications in particle trapping and manipulation, high-resolution microscopy, and quantum computing optical platforms.