Undergraduate students He Yongli and Liu Zhenxing from School of Physics and Electronics of Hunan University recently published their paper “Higher-order laser mode converters with dielectric metasurfaces” on world-leading academic journal Optics Letters. (http://dx.doi.org/10.1364/OL.40.005506)

As mentioned in the paper, a simple and compact converter based on the dielectric metasurface is proposed for the transformation of Gaussian mode to Hermite–Gaussian and Laguerre–Gaussian modes. They established the relationship between the phase of a desired mode and the local orientation of the optical axis based on the evolution of Pancharatnam–Berry phase on Poincaré sphere. By controlling the local orientation of the optical axis in the dielectric metasurface, they can achieve any desired higher-order laser mode.

The School of Physics and Electronics put forward an undergraduate research ability progress program, encouraging the undergraduates to study in labs, to provide a comprehensive innovation platform for undergraduate research and innovation.

He and Liu started their research in the Laboratory for Spin Photonics of the School this March, and since then have been devoted to laser mode converter under the guidance of associate professor Luo Hailu.

Optics Letters is a biweekly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the Optical Society of America. It was established in July, 1977. Its IF (impact factor) reached 3.292 in 2015.