Metasurface Enabled On-Chip Generation and Manipulation of Vector Beams from Vertical Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers

Abstract

Metasurface polarization optics that consist of two-dimensional array of birefringent nano-antennas have proven remarkable capabilities to generate and manipulate vectorial fields with subwavelength resolution and high efficiency. Integrating this new type of metasurface with the standard VCSEL platform enables an ultracompact and powerful solution to control both phase and polarization properties of the laser on a chip, which allows to structure a VCSEL into vector beams with on-demand wavefronts. Here, we demonstrate this concept by directly generating versatile vector beams from commercially available VCSELs through on-chip integration of high-index dielectric metasurfaces. Experimentally, the versatility of our approach for the development of vectorial VCSELs are validated by implementing a variety of functionalities, including directional emission of multibeam with specified polarizations, vectorial holographic display, and vector vortex beams generations. Notably, the proposed vectorial VCSELs integrated with a single layer of beam shaping metasurface bypass the requirements of multiple cascaded optical components, and thus have the potential to promote the advancements of ultracompact, lightweight, and scalable vector beams sources, enriching and expanding the applications of VCSELs in optical communications, laser manipulation and processing, information encryption, and quantum optics. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.