Metamaterial Huygens' surfaces: Tailoring wave fronts with reflectionless sheets
Carl Pfeiffer and Anthony Grbic
Accepted
Huygens' principle is a well known concept in electromagnetics that dates back to 1690. Here, it is applied to develop designer surfaces that provide extreme control of electromagnetic wavefronts across electrically-thin layers. These reflectionless surfaces, referred to as metamaterial Huygens' surfaces, provide new beam shaping, steering, and focusing capabilities. The metamaterial Huygens' surfaces are realized with two-dimensional arrays of polarizable particles that provide both electric and magnetic polarization currents to generate prescribed wavefronts. A straightforward design methodology is demonstrated, and applied to develop a beam-refracting surface and a Gaussian-to-Bessel beam transformer. Metamaterial Huygens' surfaces could find a wide range of applications over the entire electromagnetic spectrum including: single-surface lenses, polarization controlling devices, stealth technologies, and perfect absorbers.