Wavefront-selective Fano resonant metasurfaces

Fano resonances are conventionally understood as sharp spectral features with selectivity in the momentum-frequency domain, implying that they can be excited only by plane waves with specific frequencies and incident angles. We demonstrate that Fano resonances can be made generally selective in the space-frequency domain. They can be tailored to resonate only when excited by a frequency, polarization, and wavefront of choice. This generalization reveals that Fano systems are characterized by eigenwaves that scatter to their time-reversed image upon reflection. Although in conventional Fano systems this trivially occurs for normally incident plane waves, we show that, in general, the selected wavefront is locally retroreflected everywhere across the device. These results show that conventional Fano resonances are a subset of a broader dichroic phenomenon with spin, spatial, and spectral selectivity. We demonstrate these concepts with nonlocal metasurfaces whose governing principles are deeply rooted in the symmetry features of quasi-bound states in the continuum. Enhanced light–matter interactions and symmetry-protection make these phenomena uniquely suited for enriching applications in quantum optics, non-linear optics, augmented reality, and secure optical communications, laying the groundwork for a range of novel compact optical sources and devices.