Design, fabrication, and measurement of reflective metasurface for orbital angular momentum vortex wave in radio frequency domain

• Published in: Applied physics letters Vol. 108; no. 12
• Main Authors: Yu, Shixing, Li, Long, Shi, Guangming, Zhu, Cheng, Zhou, Xiaoxiao, Shi, Yan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Melville American Institute of Physics 21-03-2016
• Subjects: Angular momentum; Applied physics; Design; Frequency domain analysis; Metasurfaces; Radio waves; Vortices; Wireless communications
• ISSN: 0003-6951; 1077-3118
• DOI: 10.1063/1.4944789

In this paper, a reflective metasurface is designed, fabricated, and experimentally demonstrated to generate an orbital angular momentum (OAM) vortex wave in radio frequency domain. Theoretical formula of phase-shift distribution is deduced and used to design the metasurface producing vortex radio waves. The prototype of a practical configuration is designed, fabricated, and measured to validate the theoretical analysis at 5.8 GHz. The simulated and experimental results verify that the vortex waves with different OAM mode numbers can be flexibly generated by using sub-wavelength reflective metasurfaces. The proposed method and metasurface pave a way to generate the OAM vortex waves for radio and microwave wireless communication applications.