Femtosecond Polarization Pulse Shaping by Dielectric Metasurfaces*

Metasurfaces are ultra-thin, planar optical elements that have been successfully employed for a variety of spatial-domain wavefront manipulations[1]. Recently, the time-domain shaping of a large bandwidth, near-infrared femtosecond pulse was demonstrated using dielectric metasurfaces. Simultaneous and independent control of the phase and amplitude of frequency components of a pulse enables finely tailored pulse-shaping operations, including splitting, compression, chirping and higher-order distortion[2]. Here, we further exploit dielectric metasurfaces to control the temporal polarization state within a single pulse. Such an approach expands the versatility of the already fruitful metasurfaces, revealing new possibilities in the field of ultrafast science and technology.
[1] N. Yu and F. Capasso, Nature Materials 13, 139 (2014).
[2] S. Divitt, W. Zhu, C. Zhang, H. J. Lezec, and A. Agrawal, Science 364, 890 (2019).