Metamaterial-based polarization control plate for producing incoherent laser irradiation.

We present a metamaterial-based random polarization control plate to produce incoherent laser irradiation by exploiting the ability of metamaterial in the local polarization manipulation of a beam upon transmission via tuning its local geometry. As a proof of principle, we exemplify this idea numerically in a simple optical system using a typical L-shaped plasmonic metamaterial with locally varying geometry, from which the desired polarization distribution can be obtained. The calculating results illustrate that this scheme can effectively suppress the speckle contrast and increase irradiation uniformity, which has potential to satisfy the increasing requirements for incoherent laser irradiation.