Emergence of Pascal's triangle in cascaded polarization optics: an intuitive framework for field transformation

Abstract

Nature is imbued with mathematics, manifested through its stunning patterns, symmetries, and structures. Here, we unveil that in a multilayered framework of twisted birefringent optical components, a recursive number pattern of Pascal's triangle is naturally embedded in the structure of the Jones matrix which intuitively provide a generalized solution for pixel-to-pixel field transformation. The resulting standalone solution is universal across the electromagnetic spectrum, unifies N-layered metasurface and conventional bulk waveplates in a single framework, offers comprehensive insights about the bidirectional complex amplitude modulation and wavefront engineering in linear and circular polarization bases, and at the same time substantially reduces the computational cost. In essence, the discovery of number patterns in polarization optics/photonics will have broad impact across quantum optics, theory informed artificial intelligence model trainings, biomedical engineering and imaging, polarization information encryption, and advanced sensing applications.