Full-Polarization Vectorial Optical Vortex Enabled by Noninterleaved Metasurfaces for High-Dimensional Optical Encryption

Abstract Vectorial optical vortices provide a versatile route to multidimensional light control by combining states of polarization (SOPs) with orbital angular momentum (OAM). Conventional implementations, however, typically rely on spatially interleaved metasurfaces and therefore suffer from inherent trade-offs between information capacity and spatial resolution. Here we show that vectorial interference holography implemented on a noninterleaved, spin-multiplexed all-dielectric metasurface provides an effective route to overcoming these limitations. As a proof of concept, we demonstrate a coaxial trifocal vectorial optical vortex metasurface (VOVM) that generates three channels with customizable topological charges and polarization states. We further develop an eight-channel full-polarization VOVM that establishes a one-to-one correspondence between arbitrary SOPs on the Poincaré sphere and distinct topological charges, while maintaining polarization extinction ratios above 50. Leveraging this correspondence, we implement an optical encryption clock, where 64 physically addressable SOP-OAM states are transformed through an encoding protocol into a logical space containing 256 distinct encoding states. These results establish a compact platform for structured-light engineering, high-security optical encryption and integrated photonic information processing.