Professor Kuang Zhang's Breakthrough in Metasurface Phase Modulation Research Published in Nature Communications

Recently, Professor Kuang Zhang from SEIE has made significant progress in the study of phase modulation using metasurfaces. His work overcomes the physical limitation of traditional geometric phase, which only functions in cross-polarization modes, by revealing the operational mechanism of an additional phase under circular co-polarization conditions. The related research findings have been published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications under the title “Exploiting hidden singularity on the surface of the Poincaré sphere” .

This research provides a novel strategy for wavefront multiplexing of circularly polarized electromagnetic waves while maintaining their polarization state, showing considerable application potential in fields such as multi-polarization satellite communication and spin-orbit interactions .

Circularly polarized electromagnetic waves are widely used in cutting-edge fields like satellite communication and quantum optics due to their propagation stability (strong anti-interference capability, phase stability) and unique property of carrying spin-orbital angular momentum. In the microwave band, the most mature and direct application method is the co-polarized transmission and reception of circularly polarized waves. However, effective methods for phase regulation in the co-polarization channel had not been reported prior to this study .

To break through this technical bottleneck, Professor Zhang's team proposed for the first time that the spin-dependent phase mechanism of circularly polarized waves originates from singularities on the Poincaré sphere, termed the co-polarization singularity phase. By optimizing the intrinsic parameters of the unit cells to make them encircle the singularity along the path of maximum amplitude, the team achieved topologically stable 2π phase coverage with high efficiency. Furthermore, by combining this with the dynamic phase, the team successfully demonstrated efficient wavefront multiplexing for the circularly polarized co-polarization channel .

This singularity phase mechanism establishes a universal theory for phase modulation and wavefront regulation in metasurfaces, paving a new path for research in spin optics . 

Harbin Institute of Technology is the primary affiliation for this research, with Professor Kuang Zhang serving as the corresponding author. Doctoral candidate Li Jinxing and Researcher Yuan Leyi from the School of Electronics and Information Engineering are the co-first authors of the paper.

This work was supported by the Joint Fund Key Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Young Scientist Studio of Harbin Institute of Technology.

Link to the paper:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-60956-2