Wavefront-controllable all-silicon terahertz meta-polarizer

Abstract

Metamaterial devices that can directly generate polarized waves from unpolarized waves and simultaneously manipulate the wavefront are needed for advanced optical applications. However, conventional wavefront-controllable polarization conversion metasurfaces (PCMs) rely on an incident wave with a certain polarization state rather than an unpolarized wave. A few specially designed meta-polarizers had obtained polarized waves from unpolarized waves, but the simultaneous wavefront manipulation was not achieved. In this work, we report wavefront-controllable terahertz (THz) meta-polarizers based on all-silicon materials, which have higher integration characteristics than conventional meta-polarizers and wavefront-controllable PCMs. Such THz meta-polarizers merge the desired phase profile into meta-atoms’ beam interference, and will perform direct generation of polarized waves from unpolarized waves and realize simultaneous wavefront manipulations. This work is expected to provide a new impact for THz wave manipulations.