title: Polarization beam splitter based on a photonic crystal heterostructure.
abstract: The design and characterization of a photonic crystal (PC) polarization beam splitter (PBS) that operates with an extinction ratio of greater than 15 dB for both polarizations are presented. The PBS is fabricated on a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafer where the input and output ports consist of 5 mum wide ridge waveguides. A large spectral shift is observed in the dispersion plots of the lowest-order even (TE-like) and odd (TM-like) modes due to the SOI confinement. Because of this shift, the TE-like mode is close to a directional gap at the top of the band, and the TM-like mode is in a low-frequency regime where the dispersion surface is almost isotropic. We show that the TE-like mode has very high reflection at the interface between the two PCs, whereas the TM-like mode exhibits a very high transmission.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, Colorado 80309-0425, USA. Ethan.Schonbrun@colorado.edu
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Schonbrun
authors.forename: Q
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: W
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Park
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Yamashita
authors.forename: C J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Summers