Full‐Space Terahertz Airy Beam Shaping via Composite Bilayer Metasurface With Switchable Amplitude–Phase Encoding Channels
5 affiliations
- 1Yanzhao Electric Power Laboratory of North China Electric Power University North China Electric Power University Baoding Hebei China
- 2Hebei Engineering Research Center of Intelligent Technology for Power Internet of Things North China Electric Power University Baoding Hebei China
- 3Research Institute of Superconductor Electronics School of Electronic Science and Engineering & National Key Laboratory of Microwave Photonics (Nanjing University) Nanjing University Nanjing Jiangsu China
- 4National Key Laboratory of Microwave Photonics College of Electronic and Information Engineering Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics Nanjing China
- 5State Key Laboratory of Millimeter Waves Southeast University Nanjing China
Abstract
Terahertz (THz) Airy beams hold significant promise for directional wireless links in future 6G communications. Unlike conventional phased arrays with high power consumption and complexity, metasurfaces offer a platform for flexibly tailoring the Airy beam. However, existing THz metasurface‐based Airy beam generators remain confined to one dimension, and experimental verification of their quasi‐nondiffracting and self‐healing characteristics is scarce. Here, we propose a composite bilayer metasurface for full‐space THz Airy beam manipulation and experimentally demonstrate its transmission channel capabilities. By varying the structural rotation angles, the metasurface enables linearly polarized (LP) amplitude‐phase and circularly polarized (CP) Pancharatnam‐Berry (PB) phase, switching between distinct transmission channels at 0.99 THz and reflection channels at 0.538 and 0.553 THz. Ring Airy beams (RAB), phase‐modulated ring Airy beams (PRAB), and elliptical Airy vortex beams (EAVB) are realized based on the proposed composite bilayer architecture. As proof‐of‐concept demonstrations, the prototypes of LP RAB and CP EAVB are fabricated and experimentally verified. The measured distributions show good agreement with simulations, confirming the ability of the metasurfaces to manipulate Airy beams across polarization states, frequencies, and transmission directions. This work provides a compact route toward multi‐dimensional THz Airy beam manipulation with broad application prospects in areas such as free‐space optical communications and 6G THz wireless communication.
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BibTeX
@article{bai2026fullspace,
title = {{Full‐Space Terahertz Airy Beam Shaping via Composite Bilayer Metasurface With Switchable Amplitude–Phase Encoding Channels}},
author = {Yunting Bai and Shaohe Li and Yan Wang and Qike Shi and Fan Nie and Xin Jue and Yujie Liu and Hailin Wang and Runfeng Su and Jian Chen},
journal = {Nanophotonics (Berlin, Germany)},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1002/nap2.70351},
url = {https://europepmc.org/article/PMC/PMC13722953},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Full‐Space Terahertz Airy Beam Shaping via Composite Bilayer Metasurface With Switchable Amplitude–Phase Encoding Channels
AU - Yunting Bai
AU - Shaohe Li
AU - Yan Wang
AU - Qike Shi
AU - Fan Nie
AU - Xin Jue
AU - Yujie Liu
AU - Hailin Wang
AU - Runfeng Su
AU - Jian Chen
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/31
JO - Nanophotonics (Berlin, Germany)
DO - 10.1002/nap2.70351
UR - https://europepmc.org/article/PMC/PMC13722953
AB - Terahertz (THz) Airy beams hold significant promise for directional wireless links in future 6G communications. Unlike conventional phased arrays with high power consumption and complexity, metasurfaces offer a platform for flexibly tailoring the Airy beam. However, existing THz metasurface‐based Airy beam generators remain confined to one dimension, and experimental verification of their quasi‐nondiffracting and self‐healing characteristics is scarce. Here, we propose a composite bilayer metasurface for full‐space THz Airy beam manipulation and experimentally demonstrate its transmission channel capabilities. By varying the structural rotation angles, the metasurface enables linearly polarized (LP) amplitude‐phase and circularly polarized (CP) Pancharatnam‐Berry (PB) phase, switching between distinct transmission channels at 0.99 THz and reflection channels at 0.538 and 0.553 THz. Ring Airy beams (RAB), phase‐modulated ring Airy beams (PRAB), and elliptical Airy vortex beams (EAVB) are realized based on the proposed composite bilayer architecture. As proof‐of‐concept demonstrations, the prototypes of LP RAB and CP EAVB are fabricated and experimentally verified. The measured distributions show good agreement with simulations, confirming the ability of the metasurfaces to manipulate Airy beams across polarization states, frequencies, and transmission directions. This work provides a compact route toward multi‐dimensional THz Airy beam manipulation with broad application prospects in areas such as free‐space optical communications and 6G THz wireless communication.
SN - 2192-8606
SN - 2192-8614
ER -