Waveguide Metacouplers for In-Plane Polarimetry

Light-matter interactions often depend on the light's state of polarization (SOP), but actually measuring this SOP can be difficult, as the phase information between orthogonal polarization states is completely lost in conventional, intensity-based, detection. Using multiple birefringent plasmonic metasurfaces, the authors propose a compact polarimeter that is well suited for in-plane optical circuitry and allows facile determination of the SOP, as illustrated for the telecommunication wavelength of 1550 nm.