Universal free-space photonic circuits for polarized structured light

Abstract

Traditional linear-optical schemes for implementing discrete unitary transformations rely on multi-channel interferometers, typically composed of regular meshes of beam splitters and phase shifters. These architectures are well-suited to integrated photonics, where scalability and miniaturization are central requirements. In free space, universal transformations of optical modes have often been pursued through propagation in structured or inverse-designed optical systems, offering advantages in terms of addressable optical modes, reconfigurability, and flexible detection schemes. Here, we present a complementary approach: a collinear free-space photonic circuit that implements the standard interferometric paradigm in a Hilbert space of polarized structured-light modes. The circuit exploits spin-orbit coupling between circular polarization and optical modes carrying quantized transverse momentum, so that conventional beam splitters and phase shifters are replaced by structured optical materials acting directly on selected spin-orbit modes. In our demonstration, liquid-crystal metasurfaces serve as mode beam splitters and phase shifters, and we experimentally realize representative gates in a four-mode space. We further show how the architecture generalizes to larger numbers of modes, providing a scalable route to arbitrary unitary transformations in free space. Numerical optimization over random target unitaries supports the universality of the proposed scheme. These results establish a framework for universal free-space photonic circuits encoded in structured light and structured matter.