Abstract
While the spin Hall effect of light was originally demonstrated as a tiny beam displacement in the order of wavelength, the spin-orbit interaction and the associated geometric phase have been recently found as a useful resource to control light, by using metasurfaces and metamaterials. Here, I will show the great opportunities of such an approach with several examples. By exploiting geometric phases in the polarization space, I extend the spin Hall effect of light to generate independent and arbitrary surface wave orbitals for the two incident spins. The developed scheme can be used as a spin-enabled coupling interface from farfield to on-chip applications. On the other hand, the consideration of geometric phases in the real space with metamaterials allows exploring the concept of pseudo magnetic field, which can drive a photon into cyclotron in analogy to electron motion. The combination of the geometric-phase approach with transformation optics further allows us to demonstrate one-way edge states and spin-dependent transformation optical elements with one-way functionalities. These investigations allow us to study fundamental aspects of light with metamaterials, paving a robust and universal approach for spin-enabled optical applications, including spin-dependent imaging, data storage and integrated optical components.
About the Speaker
Prof Jensen Li is currently a senior lecturer at the University of Birmingham. He and his research group have been active in metamaterials research. He is best known for his work in carpet cloak, and has authored 3 book chapters and 64 research articles in journals including Nature Materials, Nature Communications, Physical Review Letters, Advanced Materials and Small, with total citations over 4500. He has previously received research grants from RGC Hong Kong, NSFC and is currently supported by a grant from Marie Curie Foundation. As well as these grants for his work in pure science, his effort in applied science has been recognized by the Samsung Global Outreach Research award of an industrial grant. His current research interests include transformation optics, synthetic gauge field, non-Hermitian optics, acoustic metamaterials and metasurfaces.
