Splitting light beam by meanderline with continuous phase profile

It has been successfully demonstrated can be widely used in nano-photonics applications owing to their flexible wavefront manipulation in a limited physical profile. However, how to improve the efficiency for the transmission light is still a challenge. We experimentally demonstrate that the sine-shaped metallic meanderline fabricated by focus ion beam technology converts circularly polarized (CP) light to its opposite handedness and sends them into different propagation directions depending on the polarization states in near-infrared and visible frequency regions. The beam splitting behavior is well characterized by a simple geometry relation, following the rule concluded from other works on the wavefront manipulation of metasurface with phase discontinuity. Importantly, the meanderline is demonstrated to be more efficient in realizing the same functions due to the suppressed high order diffractions resulted from the absence of interruption in phase profile. The theoretical efficiency reaches 67%. Particularly, potential improvements are feasible by changing or optimizing shape of the meanderline, offering high flexibility in applications for optical imaging, communications and other phase-relative techniques. Additionally, since the continuous phase provided by the meanderline can improve the sampling efficiency of the phase function, it is helpful in realizing high quality hologram.