Compound Metaoptics for Amplitude and Phase Control of Wavefronts

Metasurfaces allow tailored control over electromagnetic wavefronts. However, due to the local conservation of power flow, a passive, lossless, and reflectionless metasurface is limited to imparting phase discontinuities – and not power density discontinuities – onto a wavefront. Here, we show how the phase and power density profiles of a wavefront can be independently controlled using two closely-spaced, phase-discontinuous metasurfaces. The two metasurfaces, each designed to exhibit specific refractive properties, are separated by a wavelength-scale distance and together form a compound metaoptic. A systematic design procedure is presented, which allows transformation between arbitrary complex-valued field distributions without reflection, absorption, or active components. Such compound metaoptics may find applications in optical trapping of particles, displaying three-dimensional holographic images, shrinking the size of optical systems, or producing custom (shaped and steered) far-field radiation patterns.