Emulating Nonreciprocity with Spatially Dispersive Metasurfaces Excited at Oblique Incidence

Ultrathin metasurfaces supporting transverse surface currents provide extreme electromagnetic wave front and polarization control. Here, it is shown that adding longitudinal (normal) surface currents significantly expands the scope of electromagnetic phenomena that can be engineered with reciprocal materials. In particular, these metasurfaces are inherently spatially dispersive, which allows them to emulate nonreciprocal phenomena. It is analytically shown that spatially dispersive metasurfaces are effectively self-biased by the transverse momentum of the incident wave front. Long-standing notions of what makes a metasurface reciprocal are reinvestigated, and generalized reciprocity relations are derived. Several metasurfaces are designed that imitate Faraday rotation and optical isolation when illuminated with obliquely incident plane waves and normally incident vortex beams. These new surfaces break the inherent symmetry of previous metasurface designs, enabling low-profile devices with unprecedented functionality.