Wavefront engineering with atomic Huygens' surfaces made simple
Abstract
Atomic arrays provide a cooperative platform for light-mediated interactions in nonlocal metasurfaces which can operate in the quantum regime without nanofabricated optical elements or intrinsic material absorption. We present a minimal atomic implementation to harness wavefront engineering and create a near-ideal intrinsic atomic Huygens' surface. A simple bilayer square lattice with a two-atom unit cell, not limited to small lattice spacings, provides near-unity reflectionless transmission and a full 2π phase control of transmitted light without the localized site-dependent level shifts of previous proposals. This simplification is achieved through nonlocal radiative excitations that provide the familiar electric-dipole response with even radiation parity as well as an odd-parity radiation channel whose leading multipolar interpretation combines magnetic-dipole and electric-quadrupole contributions in atoms exhibiting only electric dipole transitions. This eliminates the need to simultaneously excite pure electric-dipole and magnetic-dipole responses with exactly matched radiation. We derive a two-mode model for this response and show that it accurately captures full coupled-dipole simulations near the optimal lattice spacings. Because of the wide applicability of coupled-dipole models, the relevance of our microscopic analysis extends beyond atomic physics to nanostructured metasurfaces. Moreover, the same platform also connects directly to established subradiance-protected single-photon storage protocols, suggesting a route toward combining wavefront engineering, storage, and retrieval in a simple atomic bilayer.
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BibTeX
@misc{ballantine2026wavefront,
title = {{Wavefront engineering with atomic Huygens' surfaces made simple}},
author = {K. E. Ballantine and J. Ruostekoski},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2611.04538},
eprint = {2611.04538},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.04538},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Wavefront engineering with atomic Huygens' surfaces made simple
AU - K. E. Ballantine
AU - J. Ruostekoski
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/03
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2611.04538
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.04538
AB - Atomic arrays provide a cooperative platform for light-mediated interactions in nonlocal metasurfaces which can operate in the quantum regime without nanofabricated optical elements or intrinsic material absorption. We present a minimal atomic implementation to harness wavefront engineering and create a near-ideal intrinsic atomic Huygens' surface. A simple bilayer square lattice with a two-atom unit cell, not limited to small lattice spacings, provides near-unity reflectionless transmission and a full 2π phase control of transmitted light without the localized site-dependent level shifts of previous proposals. This simplification is achieved through nonlocal radiative excitations that provide the familiar electric-dipole response with even radiation parity as well as an odd-parity radiation channel whose leading multipolar interpretation combines magnetic-dipole and electric-quadrupole contributions in atoms exhibiting only electric dipole transitions. This eliminates the need to simultaneously excite pure electric-dipole and magnetic-dipole responses with exactly matched radiation. We derive a two-mode model for this response and show that it accurately captures full coupled-dipole simulations near the optimal lattice spacings. Because of the wide applicability of coupled-dipole models, the relevance of our microscopic analysis extends beyond atomic physics to nanostructured metasurfaces. Moreover, the same platform also connects directly to established subradiance-protected single-photon storage protocols, suggesting a route toward combining wavefront engineering, storage, and retrieval in a simple atomic bilayer.
ER -