Active Terahertz Anisotropy and Dispersion Engineering Based on Dual-frequency Liquid Crystal and Dielectric Metasurface

Abstract

Active broadband terahertz (THz) phase difference and its dispersion engineering based on the combination of dielectric metasurface and dual-frequency liquid crystal (DFLC) has been demonstrated, which can realize broadband achromatic wave plates and active manipulation by tuning the alternating ( AC ) frequency of electric field from 1 to 90 kHz. The artificial anisotropy of the dielectric metasurface is introduced to offset the tunable natural birefringence of the DFLC, so that the effective tuning range of the composite metadevice has been significantly improved, across from 0 to 1.0π, thus realizing the conversion from linear polarization (LP) light to arbitrarily polarized light. Moreover, a negative-dispersion phase difference of the dielectric metasurface can be achieved in the range of 0.69–1.4 THz by designing proper geometric parameters, which can be compensated with the positive-dispersion phase difference of DFLC to realize an achromatic device with broadband zero dispersion. The results show that the device can be tuned from OFF state without polarization conversion to a half-wave plate in 0.97–1.3 THz with the polarization conversion ratio (PCR) of over 97%, or to a quarter-wave plate in 0.67–1.3 THz with the PCR of over 96% by changing the AC frequency of the electric field. The active AC frequency tuning characteristics, anisotropic enhancement and broadband dispersion compensation show its great potential in THz application systems.