Dielectric metasurfaces solve differential and integro-differential equations

Abstract

Leveraging subwavelength resonant nanostructures, plasmonic metasurfaces have recently attracted much attention as a breakthrough concept for engineering optical waves both spatially and spectrally. However, inherent ohmic losses concomitant with low coupling efficiencies pose fundamental impediments over their practical applications. Not only can all-dielectric metasurfaces tackle such substantial drawbacks, but also their CMOS-compatible configurations support both Mie resonances that are invariant to the incident angle. Here, we report on a transmittive metasurface comprising arrayed silicon nanodisks embedded in a homogeneous dielectric medium to manipulate phase and amplitude of incident light locally and almost independently. By taking advantage of the interplay between the electric/magnetic resonances and employing general concepts of spatial Fourier transformation, a highly efficient metadevice is proposed to perform mathematical operations including solution of ordinary differential and integro-differential equations with constant coefficients. Our findings further substantiate dielectric metasurfaces as promising candidates for miniaturized, two-dimensional, and planar optical analog computing systems that are much thinner than their conventional lens-based counterparts.