Broadband non-polarizing beam splitter based on guided mode resonance effect

A broadband non-polarizing beam splitter (NPBS) operating in the telecommunication C+L band is designed by using the guided mode resonance effect of periodic silicon-on-insulator (SOI) elements. It is shown that this double layer SOI structure can provide ~50/50 beam ratio with the maximum divergences between reflection and transmission being less than 8% over the spectrum of 1.4 μm~1.7 μm and 1% in the telecommunication band for both TE and TM polarizations. The physical basis of this broadband non-polarizing property is on the simultaneous excitation of the TE and TM strong modulation waveguide modes near the designed spectrum band. Meanwhile, the electric field distributions for both TE and TM polarizations verify the resonant origin of spectrum in the periodic SOI structure. Furthermore, it is demonstrated with our calculations that the beam splitter proposed here is tolerant to the deviations of incident angle and structure parameters, which make it very easy to be fabricated with current IC technology.