Polarization beam splitter with wide bandwidth in air-hole-based periodic dielectric waveguides

A polarization beam splitter with wide bandwidth and simple structure in air-hole-based periodic dielectric waveguides has been proposed and designed. Operation principle of the device is based on different directional coupling properties of beams in TE and TM polarizations in parallel periodic dielectric waveguides. Performances have been evaluated by a finite-difference time-domain simulation. Results show that the polarization beam splitter provides a wide bandwidth of 113 nm with both a high extinction ratio (higher than 21 dB) and a low insertion loss (less than 1.5 dB) for optical communication wavelengths at ∼1.55 μm. Moreover, the performances of the polarization beam splitter are insensitive to longitudinal alignment errors in the coupling region, which is desirable for device fabrication and practical application.