Polarization-independent tetramer metasurface with multi-Fano resonances based on symmetry-protected bound states in the continuum

Abstract

The bound state in the continuum (BIC) has drawn much attention in electromagnetics due to its infinite lifetime and quality factor. By the method of breaking the symmetry in the metasurface, the optically invisible BIC can be converted into visible quasi-BIC with ultra-high quality factor. However, symmetry-breaking metasurfaces often suffer from polarization sensitivity due to structural or field asymmetry. In this paper, we propose a metasurface consisting of nanodisk tetramer clusters to realize the transformation from BICs to quasi-BICs and support four resonances in the near-infrared range. The in-plane center square defect is introduced to provide symmetry-breaking while C4v symmetry is maintained. By performing the multipole decomposition and near-field analysis, these four modes can be demonstrated to be excited by electric quadrupole (EQ), magnetic quadrupole (MQ), magnetic dipole (MD) and toroidal dipole (TD) moments. We demonstrate the full angles polarization-independent characteristic of the metasurface and investigate the robustness by introducing off-center square defects. In addition, we also evaluate the sensing performance of the metasurface as a refractive index sensor. We believe that this work could provide new references for the polarization insensitive metasurface with multiple resonances and help to develop the applications such as biochemical sensing, low-threshold lasing and nonlinear devices.