Information theory of metasurfaces

Area of Science:

• Electromagnetics
• Information Theory
• Metamaterials Science

Background:

• Metasurfaces offer advanced control over electromagnetic waves.
• Understanding the information capacity of metasurfaces is crucial for their application.
• Existing theories lack a comprehensive framework for quantifying metasurface information content.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a theoretical framework for characterizing metasurface information and processing abilities.
• To establish the relationship between metasurface information and its far-field radiation pattern.
• To determine the theoretical upper limit of orthogonal radiation states and guide metasurface inverse design.

Main Methods:

• Incorporation of a general aperture model with an uncertainty relation in L^2-space.
• Development of a theory to predict the upper bound of information in metasurface radiation patterns.
• Investigation of information content in disordered-phase modulated metasurfaces.

Main Results:

• A theory is proposed to predict the upper bound of information in metasurface radiation patterns.
• The theoretical upper limit of orthogonal radiation states is revealed.
• Disordered-phase modulated metasurfaces exhibit information invariance (1-γ) for chaotic radiation patterns, independent of physical parameters.

Conclusions:

• The information invariance of chaotic radiation patterns (1-γ) may represent a lower bound for metasurface radiation pattern information.
• This finding provides a theoretical limit for information modulation applications.
• The theory guides the inverse design of metasurfaces for functionalities in computational imaging, stealth technologies, and wireless communications.