Strengthened spin Hall effect of circularly polarized light enabled by a single-layered dielectric metasurface

Abstract

The spin Hall effect of light, referring to the spin-dependent and transverse splitting of light at an optical interface, is an interface-dependent phenomenon. In contrast to this commonly accepted statement, it has been recently reported that the spin Hall effect under circularly polarized light is interface-independent. Despite this interface-independence, however, the reflection of the spin Hall shifted beam is mostly suppressed under near-normal incidence, where the spin Hall shift is large because of the handedness reversal that occurs during the reflection. Here we present a single-layered dielectric metasurface to realize the interface-independent and strengthened spin Hall effect of light. Numerical simulation results confirmed that the anisotropic geometry of the metasurface induced phase-reversed reflection for one linear polarization and phase-preserved reflection for the other, thereby strongly strengthening the reflection of the spin-Hall-shifted beam. Our work will pave a route toward the precise displacement of the beam at the nanoscale without perturbing its polarization state.