Matthieu Dupré

From parabolic-trough to metasurface-concentrator: assessing focusing in the wave-optics limit

Metasurfaces are promising tools toward novel designs for flat optics applications. As such, their quality and tolerance to fabrication imperfections need to be evaluated with specific tools. However, most such tools rely on the geometrical optics approximation and are not straightforwardly applicable to metasurfaces. In this Letter, we introduce and evaluate for metasurfaces parameters such as intercept factor and slope error usually defined for solar concentrators in the realm of ray-optics. After proposing definitions valid in physical optics, we put forward an approach to calculate them. As examples, we design three different concentrators based on three specific unit cells and assess them numerically. The concept allows for comparison of the efficiency of the metasurfaces and their sensitivities to fabrication imperfections and will be critical for practical systems implementation.

Local phase method for designing and optimizing metasurface devices

Metasurfaces have attracted significant attention due to their novel designs for flat optics. However, the approach usually used to engineer metasurface devices assumes that neighboring elements are identical, by extracting the phase information from simulations with periodic boundaries, or that near-field coupling between particles is negligible, by extracting the phase from single particle simulations. This is not the case most of the time and the approach thus prevents the optimization of devices that operate away from their optimum. Here, we propose a versatile numerical method to obtain the phase of each element within the metasurface (meta-atoms) while accounting for near-field coupling. Quantifying the phase error of each element of the metasurfaces with the proposed local phase method paves the way to the design of highly efficient metasurface devices including, but not limited to, deflectors, high numerical aperture metasurface concentrators, lenses, cloaks, and modulators.

On the design of random metasurface based devices

Metasurfaces are generally designed by placing scatterers in periodic or pseudo-periodic grids. We propose and discuss design rules for functional metasurfaces with randomly placed anisotropic elements that randomly sample a well-defined phase function. By analyzing the focusing performance of random metasurface lenses as a function of their density and the density of the phase-maps used to design them, we find that the performance of 1D metasurfaces is mostly governed by their density while 2D metasurfaces strongly depend on both the density and the near-field coupling configuration of the surface. The proposed approach is used to design all-polarization random metalenses at near infrared frequencies. Challenges, as well as opportunities of random metasurfaces compared to periodic ones are discussed. Our results pave the way to new approaches in the design of nanophotonic structures and devices from lenses to solar energy concentrators.

A Monte Carlo approach for investigating the fabrications imperfections for high-efficiency metasurface solar concentrators

We introduce and evaluate, for metasurfaces, parameters such as the intercept factor usually defined for solar concentrators in the realm of ray-optics. The concept provides a path to design highly efficiency metasurface solar concentrators.

A random metasurface for an all polarizations flat lens (Conference Presentation)

We consider gold plasmonic nanorods in the infrared domain. Such elements are very anisotropic and only polarizable along their longer dimension. Varying the nanorod length from 150 to 500 nm changes the resonant frequency of the element, which allows us to tune the phase-shift provided to an incident plane wave which electric field is parallel to the long axis. On the contrary, the nanorod is transparent to an incoming plane wave with a polarization perpendicular to its main axis. In order to provide a 0 to 2pi phase shift, we chose to work in reflection with metasurfaces made of elements with random positions and orientation. We emphasize that the length of each nanorod is not random, but strongly depends on the position of the element. It is chosen accordingly so that the reflected phase shift follows a parabolic law. The focusing efficiency strongly depends on the density of nanorods but also of the dimensionality and of the symmetry of the metasurface. Using full wave simulations, we design ordered and random metalens and compare their characteristics. Unfortunately, simulating 2D large area metasurface is numerically challenging. Hence, we extract the transmission matrix parameters for single elements from our FDTD simulation, and model the metasurface as an array of two level atom scatterers Finally, we present an experimental realization of such random metalens. The latter is made with conventional top-down fabrication techniques and e-beam lithography. We will show that the resulting lens focus light on diffraction limited focal spots for the two polarizations.