https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/s10053-021-00104-9
Regular Article - Optical Phenomena and Photonics
Full polarization states modulating via an ultra-thin quarter-wave plate
School of Physics and Electronic Science, Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory of Flexible Electronic Materials Genome Engineering, Changsha University of Science and Technology, 410004, Changsha, China
Received:
11
October
2020
Accepted:
14
December
2020
Published online:
8
March
2021
We theoretically and numerically demonstrate a design of an ultra-thin quarter-wave plate (QWP) based on plasmonic metasurface. With the designed QWP, the ellipticity of the output light can be generalized as X 
2sin(
cos(, providing a convenient way to calculate the polarization states of the output light. With such a strategy, output lights with any desired polarization states including linear, circular and especially elliptical can be obtained by adjusting the incident polarization angle 
. The Jones vector is adopted to theoretically explore the underlying physics of polarization conversion. Moreover, the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations are utilized to verify the theoretical results. These results will deepen our understanding of polarization conversion and provide helpful guidelines in designing ultra-thin polarization-dependent devices.
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to EDP Sciences, SIF and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2021
