By allowing almost arbitrary distributions of amplitude and phase of electromagnetic waves to be generated by a layer of sub-wavelength-size unit cells, metasurfaces have given rise to the field of meta-holography. However, holography with circularly polarized waves remains complicated as the achiral building blocks of existing meta-holograms inevitably contribute to holographic images generated by both left-handed and right-handed waves. Here we demonstrate how planar chirality enables the fully independent realization of high-efficiency meta-holograms for one circular polarization or the other. Such circular-polarization-selective meta-holograms are based on chiral building blocks that reflect either left-handed or right-handed circularly polarized waves with an orientation-dependent phase. Using terahertz waves, we experimentally demonstrate that this allows the straightforward design of reflective phase meta-holograms, where the use of alternating structures of opposite handedness yields independent holographic images for circularly polarized waves of opposite handedness with negligible polarization cross-talk.

Metamaterials offer exciting opportunities that enable precise control of amplitude, polarization and phase of the light beam at a subwavelength scale. A gradient metasurface consists of a class of anisotropic subwavelength metamaterial resonators that offer abrupt amplitude and phase changes, thus enabling new applications in optical device design such as ultrathin flat lenses. We propose a highly efficient gradient metasurface lens based on a metal-dielectric-metal structure that operates in the terahertz regime. The proposed structure consists of slotted metallic resonator arrays on two sides of a thin dielectric spacer. By varying the geometrical parameters, the metasurface lens efficiently manipulates the spatial distribution of the terahertz field and focuses the beam to a spot size on the order of a wavelength. The proposed flat metasurface lens design is polarization insensitive and works efficiently even at wide angles of incidence.

Weyl points are discrete locations in the three-dimensional momentum space where two bands cross linearly with each other. They serve as the monopoles of Berry curvature in the momentum space, and their existence requires breaking of either time-reversal or inversion symmetry^{1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16}. Although various non-centrosymmetric Weyl systems have been reported¹⁵, demonstration of Weyl degeneracies due to breaking of the time-reversal symmetry remains scarce and is limited to electronic systems^17,18. Here, we report the experimental observation of photonic Weyl degeneracies in a magnetized semiconductor—InSb, which behaves as a magnetized plasma¹⁹ for electromagnetic waves at the terahertz band. By varying the magnetic field strength, Weyl points and the corresponding photonic Fermi arcs have been demonstrated. Our observation establishes magnetized semiconductors as a reconfigurable²⁰ terahertz Weyl system, which may prompt research on novel magnetic topological phenomena such as chiral Majorana-type edge states and zero modes in classic systems^21,22.

Metasurface-empowered bound state in the continuum (BIC) provides a unique route for fascinating functional devices with infinitely high quality factors. This method is particularly attractive to the terahertz community because it may essentially solve the deficiencies in terahertz filters, sensors, lasers, and nonlinear sources. However, most BIC metasurfaces are limited to specified incident angles that seriously dim their application prospects. Here, we propose that a dual-period dielectric metagrating can support multiple families of BICs that originate from guided mode resonances in the dielectric grating and exhibit infinite quality factors at arbitrarily tilted incidence. This robustness was analyzed based on the Bloch theory and verified at tilted incident angles. We also demonstrate that inducing geometric asymmetry is an efficient way to manipulate the leakage and coupling of these BICs, which can mimic the electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) effect in our dual-period metagrating. In this demonstration, a slow-light effect with a measured group delay of 117 ps was achieved. The incidence-insensitive BICs proposed here may greatly extend the application scenarios of the BIC effect. The high Q factor and outstanding slow-light effect in the metagrating show exciting prospects in realizing high-performance filters, sensors, and modulators for prompting terahertz applications.