Optical analog signal processing technology has been widely studied and applied in a variety of science and engineering fields. It overcomes the low-speed and high-power consumption disadvantages compared with its digital counterparts. One kind of the optical analog signal processing, optical edge detection, is a useful method for characterizing boundaries. In another context, metasurface as a recently developed technology has been introduced to optical imaging and processing and attracted much attentions. Here, we propose a new mechanism to implement an optical spatial differentiator consisting of a designed Pancharatnam-Berry (PB) phase metasurface inserted between two orthogonally aligned linear polarizers. Unlike other spatial differentiator approaches, our method does not depend on complex layered structures or critical plasmonic coupling condition, but instead based on spin-to-orbit interactions. Experiment confirms that broadband optical analog computing enables the edge detection of an object and achieves tunable resolution at the resultant edges. Furthermore, metasurface orientation dependent edge detection is also demonstrated experimentally.
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