Multiplexed Nondiffracting Nonlinear Metasurfaces

Metasurfaces and planar photonic nanostructures have drawn great interest from the optical scientific community due to their diverse abilities of manipulating electromagnetic waves and high integration. Most metasurfaces launch diffracting waves, and thus suffer from divergence, short working distance, and instability. Although much effort has been devoted to researching nondiffracting metasurfaces which can launch electromagnetic waves with constant transverse intensity profiles in free-space propagation, the number of working channels is inherently limited as these meta-devices are implemented in the linear optical regime. Here, the multiplexed nondiffracting nonlinear metasurfaces are theoretically proposed and experimentally realized, which can generate the representative nondiffracting Bessel beam and Airy beam. Three Bessel beams with different numerical apertures and topological charges and three Airy beams with different propagation curves and focal lengths can be generated by a combination of different spins and wavelengths. The complex properties of the nondiffracting beams can be designed and detected in a more comprehensive and concise way with Fourier analysis. This proof-of-concept represents a new strategy for realizing multiplexed nondiffracting metasurfaces with advantages of ultracompactness, high-pixelation, and easy integration and paves the way for multi-channel optical communication and manipulation.