Arbitrary Optical Wavefront Shaping with Holographic Plasmonic Gap Waveguides

Manipulations of free-space light are usually achieved through various metasurfaces and spatial light modulators. However, an external light source is required to excite these devices, making complete on-chip integrations difficult. Integrated photonics enables the miniaturization and multi-functionalization of optical systems by densely packing numerous optical components on a single chip. Particularly, plasmons have recently attracted extensive attention due to their unique abilities to enable the routing and manipulation of light at the nanoscale. Here optical wavefront shaping achieved by holographic metal-insulator-metal plasmonic gap waveguides is reported. An arbitrary free-space wave's amplitude and phase information can be recorded in the waveguide by the amplitude variation of the guided wave. By elaborately designing the plasmonic gap waveguide, the guided waves can be molded into any desired free-space light field, thus enabling complex free-space functions including highly directional beams, dual beams with arbitrarily tailorable power ratio and radiation angles, focusing beams, and Airy beam generation. This study opens a new route for optical wavefront shaping via modulating guided waves. It paves the way for optical interconnects across multifunctional photonic integrated devices and free space, holding potential in optical communications, light detection and ranging, imaging, and displays. © 2023 Wiley-VCH GmbH.