Manipulation of beat length and wavelength dependence of a polarization beam splitter using a subwavelength grating.

A polarization beam splitter assisted by a subwavelength grating (SWG) is proposed. The SWG enables nearly 20-fold beat length reduction for TE, which makes the high extinction ratio (ER) possible. On the other hand, the embedded SWG preferably affects the refractive index of the even mode in the coupling region and broadens the bandwidth of the splitter. As a result, the ER of 28.7 dB (24.8 dB) for TE (TM) is obtained, while the insertion loss is only 0.10 dB (0.11 dB) at the wavelength of 1550 nm. The ER is more than 10 dB in the wavelength range of 1450-1625 nm for TE and 1495-1610 nm for TM.