Optical beam splitting and asymmetric transmission in bi-layer metagratings

In this work, inspired by advances in twisted two-dimensional materials, we design and study a new type of optical bi-layer metasurface system, which is based on subwavelength metal slit arrays with phase-gradient modulation, referred to as metagratings (MGs). It is shown that due to the found reversed diffraction law, the interlayer interaction that can be simply adjusted by the gap size can produce a transition from optical beam splitting to high-efficiency asymmetric transmission of incident light from two opposite directions. Our results provide new physics and some advantages for designing subwavelength optical devices to realize efficient wavefront manipulation and one-way propagation.