Surface-wave-assisted nonreciprocity in spatio-temporally modulated metasurfaces.

TitleSurface-wave-assisted nonreciprocity in spatio-temporally modulated metasurfaces.
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2020
AuthorsAE Cardin,,, WJ Padilla, A Saxena, AJ Taylor, WJM Kort-Kamp, H-T Chen, DAR Dalvit, and AK Azad
JournalNature communications
Volume11
Issue1
Start Page1469
Date Published03/2020
Abstract

Emerging photonic functionalities are mostly governed by the fundamental principle of Lorentz reciprocity. Lifting the constraints imposed by this principle could circumvent deleterious effects that limit the performance of photonic systems. Most efforts to date have been limited to waveguide platforms. Here, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a spatio-temporally modulated metasurface capable of complete violation of Lorentz reciprocity by reflecting an incident beam into far-field radiation in forward scattering, but into near-field surface waves in reverse scattering. These observations are shown both in nonreciprocal beam steering and nonreciprocal focusing. We also demonstrate nonreciprocal behavior of propagative-only waves in the frequency- and momentum-domains, and simultaneously in both. We develop a generalized Bloch-Floquet theory which offers physical insights into Lorentz nonreciprocity for arbitrary spatial phase gradients, and its predictions are in excellent agreement with experiments. Our work opens exciting opportunities in applications where free-space nonreciprocal wave propagation is desired.

DOI10.1038/s41467-020-15273-1
Short TitleNature communications