Inverse design of metasurfaces with non-local interactions

Conventional metasurfaces have demonstrated efficient wavefront manipulation by using thick and high-aspect-ratio nanostructures in order to eliminate interactions between adjacent phase-shifter elements. Thinner-than-wavelength dielectric metasurfaces are highly desirable because they can facilitate fabrication and integration with both electronics and mechanically tunable platforms. Unfortunately, because their constitutive phase-shifter elements exhibit strong electromagnetic coupling between neighbors, the design requires a global optimization methodology that considers the non-local interactions. Here, we propose a global evolutionary optimization approach to inverse design non-local metasurfaces. The optimal designs are experimentally validated, demonstrating the highest efficiencies for the thinnest transmissive metalenses reported to-date for visible light. In a departure from conventional design methods based on the search of a library of pre-determined and independent meta-atoms, we take full advantage of the strong interactions among nanoresonators to improve the focusing efficiency of metalenses and demonstrate that efficiency improvements can be obtained by lowering the metasurface filling factors.

Haogang Cai, Srilok Srinivasan, David A. Czaplewski, Alex B. F. Martinson, David J. Gosztola, Liliana Stan, Troy Loeffler, Subramanian K. R. S. Sankaranarayanan, Daniel López