High-efficiency generation of vectorial holograms with metasurfaces

Holography plays a crucial role in optics applications, but it traditionally requires complex setup and bulky devices, being unfavourable for optics integration. While metasurface-based holograms are ultra-compact and easy to realize, holographic images generated are mostly restricted to scalar ones, with a few recent attempts on vectorial holograms suffering from complex meta-structures and low efficiencies. Here, we propose and experimentally demonstrate an efficient meta-platform to generate vectorial holograms with arbitrarily designed wave fronts and polarization distributions based on ultra-compact metaatoms. Combining GS algorithm and the wave-decomposition technique, we establish a generic strategy to retrieve the optical property, i.e., the distributions of reflection phase and polarization-conversion capability of the metasurface to generate a target vectorial holographic image. We next design a series of high-efficiency and deep-subwavelength metaatoms exhibiting arbitrarily designed reflection phases and polarization-conversion capabilities, and experimentally characterize their optical properties. Based on these metaatoms, we finally realize a series of meta-holograms that can generate pre-designed vectorial holographic images upon external illuminations, and experimentally characterize their working performances. Our work provides a high-efficiency and ultra-thin platform to generate vectorial holographic images, which can find many applications in onchip photonics.