A Plasmonic based Ultracompact Polarization Beam Splitter on Silicon-on-Insulator Waveguides

An ultracompact polarization beam splitter (PBS) is designed on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform based on the localized surface plasmons (LSPs) excited by particular polarization light. The device uses nanoscale silver cylinders as the polarization selection between two silicon waveguides of a directional coupler. The transverse-magnetic (TM) polarization light excites localized surface plasmons and is coupled into the cross port of the directional coupler with a low insert loss, while the transverse-electric (TE) polarization light is under restriction. The PBS has a coupling layer with 50 nm width and 1.1 μm length supporting broadband operation. The simulation calculations show that 22.06dB and 23.06dB of extinction ratios for the TE and TM polarizations were obtained, together with insertion losses of 0.09dB and 0.40dB.