Silicon metaoptics for the compact generation of perfect vector beams in the telecom infrared
Andrea Vogliardi, Gianluca Ruffato, Daniele Bonaldo, Simone Dal Zilio, Filippo Romanato
Abstract
Perfect vortices have attracted considerable attention as orbital angular momentum (OAM) beams with customizable ring-like intensity distribution. More recently, the non-separable combination of perfect vortices with opposite OAMs and spins, yielding so-called perfect vector beams, has further expanded their applications in the fields of optical manipulation and imaging, high-resolution lithography, and telecommunications. Exploiting the combined manipulation of dynamic and geometric phases using silicon anisotropic metaunits, here we present the design, fabrication, and characterization of novel, to the best of our knowledge, dielectric metaoptics for the compact generation of perfect vector beams in the telecom infrared using a single metasurface. These devices pave the way to integrated optical architectures with applications in information and communication technologies in both the classical and quantum regimes.