Metamaterial Huygens' Surfaces: Tailoring Wave Fronts with Reflectionless Sheets

Huygens’ principle is a well-known concept in electromagnetics that dates back to 1690. Here, it is applied to develop designer surfaces that provide extreme control of electromagnetic wave fronts across electrically thin layers. These reflectionless surfaces, referred to as metamaterial Huygens’ surfaces, provide new beam shaping, steering, and focusing capabilities. The metamaterial Huygens’ surfaces are realized with two-dimensional arrays of polarizable particles that provide both electric and magnetic polarization currents to generate prescribed wave fronts. A straightforward design methodology is demonstrated and applied to develop a beam-refracting surface and a Gaussian-to-Bessel beam transformer. Metamaterial Huygens’ surfaces could find a wide range of applications over the entire electromagnetic spectrum including single-surface lenses, polarization controlling devices, stealth technologies, and perfect absorbers.