Metalens mounted on a resonant tunneling diode for collimated and directed terahertz waves.

Abstract

Refraction in materials is a fundamental phenomenon in optics and is a factor in the manipulation of light, such as wavefront shaping and beam control. However, conventional optical lenses incorporated in numerous optical sources are made of naturally occurring materials, and material properties predetermine the lens performance. For the development of terahertz flat optics, we experimentally demonstrate a gradient-refractive-index (GRIN) collimating metalens made of our original reflectionless metasurface with an extremely high refractive index, above 10 at 0.312 THz. The planar collimating metalens converts wide-angle radiation from a resonant tunneling diode (RTD) to a collimated plane wave and enhances the directivity of a single RTD 4.2 times. We also demonstrate directional angle control of terahertz waves by moving the metalens in parallel with the incoming wave. The metalens can be simply integrated with a variety of terahertz continuous-wave (CW) sources for 6G (beyond 5G) wireless communications and imaging in future advanced applications. Flat optics based on high refractive index metasurfaces rather than naturally occurring materials can offer an accessible platform for optical devices with unprecedented functionalities.