Broadband Generation of Photonic Spin-Controlled Arbitrary Accelerating Light Beams in the Visible

• Published in: Nano letters 2019-02, Vol.19 (2), p.1158-1165
• Main Authors: Fan, Qingbin, Zhu, Wenqi, Liang, Yuzhang, Huo, Pengcheng, Zhang, Cheng, Agrawal, Amit, Huang, Kun, Luo, Xiangang, Lu, Yanqing, Qiu, Chengwei, Lezec, Henri J, Xu, Ting
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1530-6984; 1530-6992
• DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.8b04571

Bending light along arbitrary curvatures is a captivating and popular notion, triggering unprecedented endeavors in achieving diffraction-free propagation along a curved path in free-space. Much effort has been devoted to achieving this goal in homogeneous space, which solely relies on the transverse acceleration of beam centroid exerted by a beam generator. Here, based on an all-dielectric metasurface, we experimentally report a synthetic strategy of encoding and multiplexing acceleration features on a freely propagating light beam, synergized with photonic spin states of light. Independent switching between two arbitrary visible accelerating light beams with distinct acceleration directions and caustic trajectories is achieved. This proof-of-concept recipe demonstrates the strength of the designed metasurface chip: subwavelength pixel size, independent control over light beam curvature, broadband operation in the visible, and ultrathin scalable planar architecture. Our results open up the possibility of creating ultracompact, high-pixel density, and flat-profile nanophotonic platforms for efficient generation and dynamical control of structured light beams.