A Small-Divergence-Angle Orbital Angular Momentum Metasurface Antenna

• Published in: Research (Washington) Vol. 2019; p. 9686213
• Main Authors: Xu, Jianchun, Bi, Ke, Zhang, Ru, Hao, Yanan, Lan, Chuwen, McDonald-Maier, Klaus D, Zhai, Xiaojun, Zhang, Zidong, Huang, Shanguo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States AAAS 01.01.2019; American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
• ISSN: 2639-5274; 2639-5274
• DOI: 10.34133/2019/9686213

Electromagnetic waves carrying an orbital angular momentum (OAM) are of great interest. However, most OAM antennas present disadvantages such as a complicated structure, low efficiency, and large divergence angle, which prevents their practical applications. So far, there are few papers and research focuses on the problem of the divergence angle. Herein, a metasurface antenna is proposed to obtain the OAM beams with a small divergence angle. The circular arrangement and phase gradient were used to simplify the structure of the metasurface and obtain the small divergence angle, respectively. The proposed metasurface antenna presents a high transmission coefficient and effectively decreases the divergence angle of the OAM beam. All the theoretical analyses and derivation calculations were validated by both simulations and experiments. This compact structure paves the way to generate OAM beams with a small divergence angle.