Optimization and design on multi-layers of dielectric metasurface as broadband terahertz quarter wave plate

Planar metasurface-based quarter wave plates (QWPs) have significant advantages over conventional devices in terms of compactness, flexibility, and simplicity of manufacture; however, they offer a relatively narrow operational bandwidth. A broadband terahertz achromatic QWP is realized in the 0.68–1.48 THz spectral region in this work, which consists of several separate metasurface layers of dielectric elliptic pillars stacked together with various rotation angles. Meanwhile, an improved simulated annealing method is proposed, which introduces the evolutionary strategies to optimize the distinct fundamental microstructural unit cells, and the running speed is greatly increased. Furthermore, the proposed multi-layers metasurface may pave the way for arbitrary polarization control of incident waves and be ideally suited for application by virtue of subwavelength thickness in the other frequency bands as well.