Switchable Diffraction Pattern Based on Cascaded Metasurfaces

Abstract Metasurfaces have great advantages in the field of laser detection because of their ability to generate large amounts of point sources or various diffraction patterns. Here,cascaded metasurfaces (CM) for generating switchable spatial light distributions is utilized, which can be used for optical scanning and identifications. The light distribution is composed of several distinct diffraction patterns, and the scanning of the diffraction space is realized by multiple pixel‐scale alignment strategies between two pieces of CM. Through combining Dammann optimization and the gradient descent method, various diffraction patterns under different matching situations can be guaranteed by phase superposition. Various diffraction conditions with highly identifiable intensity distribution are guaranteed by using the optimization method. Such optical scanning devices based on CM have small footprints, high integration, flexible composition, and stable diffractive combination features. By manipulating CM to generate changeable spatial diffraction phenomenon may provide flexible modulation properties to optical scanning, measurement, and other applications.