Reconstruction of light profiles with amplitude and phase information, called holography, is an attractive optical technology with various significant applications such as three-dimensional imaging and optical data storage. Subwavelength spatial control of both amplitude and phase of light is an essential requirement for an ideal hologram. However, traditional holographic devices suffer from their restricted capabilities of incomplete modulation in both amplitude and phase of visible light; this results in sacrifice of optical information and undesirable occurrences of critical noises in holographic images. Herein, we have proposed a novel metasurface that is capable of completely controlling both the amplitude and phase profiles of visible light independently with subwavelength spatial resolution. The full, continuous, and broadband control of both amplitude and phase was achieved using X-shaped meta-atoms based on the expanded concept of the Pancharatnam-Berry phase. The first experimental demonstrations of the complete complex-amplitude holograms with subwavelength definition at visible wavelengths were achieved, and excellent performances with a remarkable signal-to-noise ratio as compared to those of traditional phase-only holograms were obtained. Extraordinary control capability with versatile advantages of our metasurface paves a way to an ideal holography, which is expected to be a significant advancement in the field of optical holography and metasurfaces.

Despite steady technological progress, displays are still subject to inherent limitations in resolution improvement and pixel miniaturization because a series of colours is generally expressed by a combination of at least three primary colour pixels. Here we propose a structure comprising a metal cavity and a nanoaperture, which we refer to as a cavity-aperture, to simultaneously control the colour and intensity of transmitted light in a single pixel. The metal cavity constructs plasmonic standing waves to organize the spatial distribution of amplitudes according to wavelength, and the nanoaperture permits light with a specific wavelength and amplitude to pass through it, depending on the nanoaperature's relative position in the cavity and the polarization state of the incident light. Therefore, the cavity-aperture has the potential to function as a dynamic colour pixel. This design method may be helpful in developing various photonic devices, such as micro-imaging systems and multiplexed sensors.

Broadband‐operating active devices within a small‐footprint are highly on demand in various nanophotonic fields such as fiber‐optic communication systems and chip‐based integrated optical circuits. As pioneering approaches, diverse platforms of active metasurfaces (AMs) have been proposed due to their superior tunable functionality and ultra‐compact size. However, most of previous researches provide only limited operating bandwidth because they generally rely on resonant light–matter interaction between active material and plasmonic antenna. In this study, an active wavefront switching metasurface that can operate over 500 nm bandwidth at near‐infrared spectral bands is experimentally realized by utilizing nonresonant U‐shaped Ge2Sb2Te5 nanoantennas. Two different sizes of the U‐shaped antenna are designed to exhibit large transmittance contrast and their optical phases are determined by imposing the orientation angle variation. As an example of the functionality, anomalous refraction angle switching and dispersionless active hologram are demonstrated. The devices provide high signal‐to‐noise ratio (>7 dB) for overall operation bandwidth. It is believed that the proposed AMs can be an innovative platform for real device application thanks to their not only broadband and low‐noise operation but also fast speed, low power consumption switching within a small‐footprint.

Polarization is one of the fundamental properties of light, which is inherited from the vectorial nature of electromagnetic waves. Measuring states of polarizations (SOPs) is widely used for remote sensing applications. A number of ultracompact polarimeters that analyze SOPs at a single detection without splitting of incident beams have been demonstrated recently. However, the development of a broadband polarimeter remains challenging due to the resonant feature of their building blocks. Here, an ultracompact polarimeter that retrieves the SOP of incident light with broad operation bandwidth at near-infrared wavelengths is proposed. Surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) excited by X-shaped aperture arrays are utilized as intensity probes. Full-Stokes parameters are retrieved by detecting the SPP intensities. The proposed polarimeter is demonstrated experimentally and can measure SOPs at wavelengths from 750 nm to 1050 nm. This work can help to develop more compact polarization-sensitive optical systems, such as polarimetry, ellipsometry, and optical routers.

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