In-line Dispersion Control of Femtosecond Laser Pulses by Multilayer Huygens' Metasurfaces
Abstract
Dispersion is a key limiting factor in ultrafast systems as it modifies the temporal structure of ultrashort optical pulses. Conventional dispersion compensation techniques, though widely used, rely on a combination of several bulky optical components and complex, long propagation paths, posing challenges for integration into compact photonic platforms. All-dielectric resonant metasurfaces operating in the Huygens' regime of spectrally overlapping electric and magnetic dipolar resonances offer a promising route to low-loss dispersion control at the sub-wavelength scale; however, the achievable dispersion from a single layer remains fundamentally limited by its phase gradient and spectral bandwidth. Here, we experimentally demonstrate in-line dispersion control of femtosecond laser pulses using a multilayer architecture of dielectric Huygens' metasurfaces, without requiring spatial separation of their spectral components, as typically employed in Fourier-plane dispersion compensation schemes. The phase dispersion accumulates across stacked layers approaching a total of 8pi, corresponding to a maximum group delay dispersion of around 3969 fs2. This enables efficient compensation of the input chirp and results in a significant compression of femtosecond laser pulses in the telecom wavelength range. Importantly, the metasurface stack functions as a single compact transmissive element, which is simply inserted into the beam path. Overall, our results establish a compact, scalable platform for integrated pulse compression and ultrafast dispersion engineering.
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BibTeX
@misc{fitriana2026inline,
title = {{In-line Dispersion Control of Femtosecond Laser Pulses by Multilayer Huygens' Metasurfaces}},
author = {Anna Fitriana and Katsuya Tanaka and Roland Schiek and Thomas Perstch and Dragomir Neshev and Isabelle Staude},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.08223},
eprint = {2610.08223},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.08223},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - In-line Dispersion Control of Femtosecond Laser Pulses by Multilayer Huygens' Metasurfaces
AU - Anna Fitriana
AU - Katsuya Tanaka
AU - Roland Schiek
AU - Thomas Perstch
AU - Dragomir Neshev
AU - Isabelle Staude
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/06
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.08223
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.08223
AB - Dispersion is a key limiting factor in ultrafast systems as it modifies the temporal structure of ultrashort optical pulses. Conventional dispersion compensation techniques, though widely used, rely on a combination of several bulky optical components and complex, long propagation paths, posing challenges for integration into compact photonic platforms. All-dielectric resonant metasurfaces operating in the Huygens' regime of spectrally overlapping electric and magnetic dipolar resonances offer a promising route to low-loss dispersion control at the sub-wavelength scale; however, the achievable dispersion from a single layer remains fundamentally limited by its phase gradient and spectral bandwidth. Here, we experimentally demonstrate in-line dispersion control of femtosecond laser pulses using a multilayer architecture of dielectric Huygens' metasurfaces, without requiring spatial separation of their spectral components, as typically employed in Fourier-plane dispersion compensation schemes. The phase dispersion accumulates across stacked layers approaching a total of 8pi, corresponding to a maximum group delay dispersion of around 3969 fs2. This enables efficient compensation of the input chirp and results in a significant compression of femtosecond laser pulses in the telecom wavelength range. Importantly, the metasurface stack functions as a single compact transmissive element, which is simply inserted into the beam path. Overall, our results establish a compact, scalable platform for integrated pulse compression and ultrafast dispersion engineering.
ER -