Optical Polarization Encoding Using Graphene‐Loaded Plasmonic Metasurfaces

Abstract

Moreover, the development of a feasible metadevice design that has the ability to dynamically tune the light polarization state has attracted enormous interest. Such metadevices can be employed for realizing not only the polarization encoding but also polarization-division multiplexing (PDM), which is a crucial technique that can signifi cantly increase the transmission capacity of a single physical channel. [ 34 ] The traditional technique for realizing PDM requires a complex optical system and cumbersome volume. Therefore, a metadevice-based polarization modulator offers a new approach for simplifying the optical process and miniaturizing the required volume. Although metasurfaces can transform light polarization, the change of polarization-control characteristic requires variation of the size, shape, and material properties of the structure. Hence, the dynamical manipulation of the polarization state using a metasurface is still challenging. In this work, we propose a metadevice by integrating a single layer of graphene with an anisotropic metasurface, which can dynamically modulate the polarization state of light with wide tunable range in MIR wavelengths. By switching gate voltage applied on the graphene among three different values, the incident linearly polarized (LP) light can be dynamically converted into left circularly polarized (LCP) light, right circularly polarized (RCP) light, or linearly cross-polarized light in the refl ection direction by the proposed metadevice. A continuous polarization evolution from LCP to RCP light can be achieved as the gate voltage gradually increases. In addition, two mutually perpendicular LP light beams and an elliptically polarized (EP) light beam can also be generated in the refl ection direction by the proposed metadevice under EP light illumination. Based on these polarization-control characteristics, the proposed metadevice can realize polarization encoding and the PDM technique. The process of multiplexing and demultiplexing in the PDM technique can be accomplished by metadevices with a more simple approach and in a more compact space than traditional PDM techniques. The new degrees of freedom enabled by the metadevice facilitate the arbitrary manipulation of light polarization states and will profoundly affect a wide range of modern optical communication devices. Control of the light polarization state is an important area of research for metasurfaces. The anisotropy of plasmonic metasurfaces plays a dominant role in manipulating the light polarization state. The different optical responses along two orthogonal principal axes of the nanostructures result in different amplitude attenuation and phase retardation of the Optical Polarization Encoding Using Graphene-Loaded Plasmonic Metasurfaces