Disclosure of Invention
In view of the above, it is desirable to provide an arbitrary polarization conversion super surface capable of converting arbitrary polarized light into light of a specific polarization and a method of converting the arbitrary polarized light into polarization.
The random polarization conversion super-surface is characterized by comprising a depolarization super-surface and a polaroid super-surface, wherein the depolarization super-surface and the polaroid super-surface are integrated on the front side and the back side of a processing substrate;
The depolarization super surface is used for depolarizing incident light with arbitrary polarization into completely unpolarized light;
the super surface of the polaroid is used for converting the completely unpolarized light into linearly polarized light with a fixed oscillation direction.
In one embodiment, the depolarization supersurface is implemented by a large number of periodically arranged but randomly rotated rectangular Si nanopillars etched on a SiO 2 substrate.
In one embodiment, the polarizer of the polarizer supersurface is comprised of periodic metal gratings.
In one embodiment, the polarizer supersurface allows transmission of polarized light perpendicular to the grating and blocks the passage of polarized light parallel to the grating.
In one embodiment, the incident light of any polarization is linearly polarized light emitted by a polarized laser emitter and is generated after passing through a half-wave plate or a quarter-wave plate.
A method of polarization conversion of light of arbitrary polarization, the method comprising:
Preparing a depolarization super surface and a polaroid super surface;
integrating the depolarization super surface and the polaroid super surface on the front side and the back side of a processing substrate;
The incident light with arbitrary polarization is de-deflected into completely unpolarized light through the depolarization super surface;
And converting the completely unpolarized light into linearly polarized light with a fixed oscillation direction through the super surface of the polaroid.
In one embodiment, the depolarization subsurface is also prepared by etching a large number of periodically arranged but randomly rotated rectangular Si nanopillars on a SiO 2 substrate.
In one embodiment, the method further comprises preparing the polarizer supersurface from a periodic metal grating.
In one embodiment, the method further comprises generating the incident light with any polarization after passing through a half-wave plate or a quarter-wave plate by linearly polarized light emitted by the polarized laser transmitter before the incident light with any polarization is de-deflected into completely unpolarized light by the depolarization super surface.
In one embodiment, the method further comprises the step of generating emergent light with any polarization after the linearly polarized light passes through a half wave plate or a quarter wave plate after the completely unpolarized light is converted into the linearly polarized light with a fixed oscillation direction through the super surface of the polarizing plate.
The method for converting the polarization of the random polarized light and the random polarized light realizes the conversion of the random polarized light by adopting a mode of combining the depolarization super surface and the polaroid super surface. The first step is to design a depolarization super surface, which is used for depolarizing the incident light with arbitrary polarization and converting the incident light into completely unpolarized light, namely natural light. And secondly, designing the super surface of the polaroid, and converting the natural light generated in the first step into linearly polarized light with a fixed oscillation direction. The super surface designed by the invention has simple processing, lower cost and stable transmission efficiency, and can ensure that certain fixed polarized light can be generated under the condition of incidence of any polarized light.
Detailed Description
The present application will be described in further detail with reference to the drawings and examples, in order to make the objects, technical solutions and advantages of the present application more apparent. It should be understood that the specific embodiments described herein are for purposes of illustration only and are not intended to limit the scope of the application.
A random polarization conversion super-surface is characterized in that the super-surface comprises a depolarization super-surface and a polaroid super-surface, wherein the depolarization super-surface and the polaroid super-surface are integrated on the front side and the back side of a processing substrate;
The depolarization super surface is used for depolarizing the incident light with any polarization into completely unpolarized light;
The super surface of the polaroid is used for converting completely unpolarized light into linearly polarized light with a fixed oscillation direction.
In one embodiment, as shown in fig. 1, which is a schematic diagram of an arbitrary polarization conversion super surface, a large number of periodically arranged but randomly rotated rectangular Si nano columns are etched on a SiO 2 substrate to prepare a depolarization super surface, a periodic aluminum grating is used to prepare a polarizer super surface, which is used to remove the polarization characteristic of incident light and re-polarize, and the depolarization super surface and the polarizer super surface are integrated on the front and back sides of a quartz crystal, so that the integration of a polarization conversion structure can be realized. To depolarize any incident light into statistically unpolarized light, the depolarizing supersurface is achieved by etching a large number of periodically arranged but randomly rotated rectangular Si nanopillars on the SiO 2 substrate, as shown in fig. 2 (a). For an array of 200×200 cells, the degree of rotation randomization is represented by fig. 2 (b), and it can be observed that the rotation angle distribution thereof is uniform, satisfying the randomization condition.
The principle of depolarization of the depolarizer super-surface is that by introducing a phase delay of pi between the fast and slow axes, each cell of the depolarizer can be seen as a half-wave plate element. For linearly polarized light with polarization direction α relative to the fast axis angle, the half wave plate rotates its transmission polarization direction by an angle of 2α, while for circularly polarized light it converts the incident light into a polarization state with opposite rotation direction, and the phase of the outgoing light is accompanied by a phase retardation associated with α, similar to the function of a Pancharatnam-Berry (PB) phase super surface. Considering that any polarization can be decomposed into a superposition of two orthogonal linear polarizations, by constructing randomly arranged silicon nanopillars, incident light of any polarization can be converted into a mixed state of random polarization states. To further explain the depolarization principle, the Stokes vector is calculated according to the following equation:
where E x and E y are the electric field strengths along the x-axis and y-axis, respectively, and δ is the phase difference between the two fields. I represents the total light intensity, Q and U are the direction and intensity of the linear polarization component, and V is the intensity of the circularly polarized portion. For linearly polarized light, the incident Stokes vector S in may be represented as
The output stokes vector S out of the light passing through the depolarizer can thus be obtained by introducing a mueller matrix M having the form
Wherein θ n is the rotation angle of the nth nanopillar. Due to the randomness of the rotation angle, the output stokes vector can be calculated as a statistical average of the transmitted light of all cells. As a result, when the number N of array elements is sufficiently large, the stokes vector of the transmitted light becomes:
the expression indicates that the output light is completely unpolarized, i.e., the depolarizer completely removes the polarization information.
In one embodiment, as shown in FIG. 3, the polarizer of the polarizer supersurface is comprised of periodic metal gratings. The polarizer super-surface allows polarized light perpendicular to the grating to pass through, while preventing polarized light parallel to the grating from passing through.
In one embodiment, the incident light of any polarization is linearly polarized light emitted by a polarized laser emitter and is generated after passing through a half-wave plate or a quarter-wave plate.
A method of polarization conversion of light of arbitrary polarization, the method comprising:
Preparing a depolarization super surface and a polaroid super surface;
Integrating the depolarization super surface and the polaroid super surface on the front side and the back side of the processing substrate;
The incident light with arbitrary polarization is deflectated into completely unpolarized light through the depolarization super surface;
completely unpolarized light is converted into linearly polarized light with a fixed oscillation direction through the super surface of the polarizing plate.
The method for converting the polarization of the random polarized light and the random polarized light realizes the conversion of the random polarized light by adopting a mode of combining the depolarization super surface and the polaroid super surface. The first step is to design a depolarization super surface, which is used for depolarizing the incident light with arbitrary polarization and converting the incident light into completely unpolarized light, namely natural light. And secondly, designing the super surface of the polaroid, and converting the natural light generated in the first step into linearly polarized light with a fixed oscillation direction. The super surface designed by the invention has simple processing, lower cost and stable transmission efficiency, and can ensure that certain fixed polarized light can be generated under the condition of incidence of any polarized light.
In one embodiment, the depolarization subsurface is also prepared by etching a large number of periodically arranged but randomly rotated rectangular Si nanopillars on a SiO 2 substrate.
In one embodiment, the method further comprises preparing the polarizer supersurface from a periodic metal grating.
In one embodiment, the method further comprises the step of generating emergent light with arbitrary polarization after the linearly polarized light passes through a half wave plate or a quarter wave plate after the completely unpolarized light is converted into the linearly polarized light with fixed oscillation direction through the super surface of the polaroid.
After the incident light with random deflection is converted into linear polarized light with a fixed oscillation direction, if other polarized light is needed, a half wave plate and a quarter wave plate can be arranged at the emergent end, so that the generation of random polarized light is realized.
In one embodiment, as shown in fig. 4, an experimental flow chart for converting light of arbitrary polarization into linearly polarized light is shown. The polarized laser transmitter transmits linear polarized light, and vertical polarized light is generated after polarization beam splitting. The half wave plate or the quarter wave plate can be used for converting the linear polarized light into any polarized light, such as linear polarized light, elliptical polarized light and circular polarized light with different polarization directions. After the converted light is focused by the lens and irradiates the super surface designed by the invention, the output light is stable vertical linearly polarized light. And (3) observing and recording the output light power of the photoelectric detector by rotating the half wave plate or the quarter wave plate, and judging the polarization characteristic of the emergent light.
Fig. 5 shows a transmission curve of linearly polarized light with different polarization directions generated by using a half-wave plate after passing through the linear polarizing plate, wherein the transmission power shows a trend of cos 2θp with a polarization angle θ p, and θ p is the polarization angle of polarized light.
Fig. 6 is a scanning electron microscope image of a subsurface sample processed using the principles of the present invention (fig. 6 (a), 6 (b)) and test results (6 (c)). The extinction ratio tested was up to 350:1 using a commercial linear polarizer as a reference. The polarizer is replaced by the polarizer designed by the invention, and the test is carried out by the same method, wherein the extinction ratio is about 15:1, and the deviation from the design value is large. The reason for the low extinction ratio of the designed polaroid is mainly that 1) the processing error 2) the preparation area is small, and the focusing performance of the laser beam is poor, so that the main polarization component and the cross polarization component can be transmitted from the periphery of the sample, the overall power is increased, and the extinction performance is reduced. The extinction ratio is reduced from 350:1 to about 5:1 by using the commercial polaroid combined with the depolarization super surface, which shows that the depolarization super surface effectively depolarizes the incident linear polarized light, and the polarization degree is reduced. However, the center of the transmission power fluctuation is about 0.2, which is a certain difference from the theoretical value of 0.5. This is due to errors in process dimensions and incomplete photoresist removal resulting in enhanced reflection and absorption and reduced transmittance. The extinction ratio of the polarization conversion super surface is further reduced by about 1.7:1 because the designed linear polarizer has a low extinction ratio and poor blocking effect on horizontally linearly polarized light, resulting in a power meter receiving power greater than the combination of the depolarization super surface and the commercial linear polarizer. In the perpendicular polarization direction, since the designed linear polarizer has a lower transmittance than the commercial linear polarizer, the transmission power is reduced. Experimental results show that most polarized light in any incident polarization direction is converted into set linear polarized light, and the correctness of the principle of the invention is proved.
The technical features of the above embodiments may be arbitrarily combined, and all possible combinations of the technical features in the above embodiments are not described for brevity of description, however, as long as there is no contradiction between the combinations of the technical features, they should be considered as the scope of the description.
The above examples illustrate only a few embodiments of the application, which are described in detail and are not to be construed as limiting the scope of the application. It should be noted that it will be apparent to those skilled in the art that several variations and modifications can be made without departing from the spirit of the application, which are all within the scope of the application. Accordingly, the scope of protection of the present application is to be determined by the appended claims.