Terahertz beam shaping with metasurface

Based on metasurface, two beam shapers are designed to modulate the wavefront of the terahertz beam. One of the beam shapers is THz ring-Airy beam generator and the other is THz four-focus lens. Each beam shaper is composed of a serious of C-shaped slot antennas, which can be used to modulate the phase and amplitude of the cross-polarized scattered wave. A THz holographic imaging system is utilized to measure the field of the generated beams. The ring Airy beam shaper is designed by replacing both the phase and amplitude of its initial electric field with the corresponding antennas. In the experiment, an abrupt focus following a parabolic trajectory is subsequently observed. This method can be expanded to other wavebands, such as the visible band, in which the ring-Airy beam shaper can replace traditional computer-generated holography to avoid undesirable multiple diffraction orders. The phase distribution of the four-focus lens is obtained by using the Yang-Gu amplitude-phase retrieval algorithm and then encoded to the antennas. Both the focusing and imaging properties are demonstrated. A clear image can be obtained with a bandwidth of 110 GHz. This type of transmissive metasurface beam shaper serves as an attractive alternative to conventional diffractive optical elements based on its small size, ease of fabrication, and low cost.