Fused-silica sandwiched three-port grating under second Bragg angle incidence

•Operation under the second Bragg angle incidence.•Three orders with nearly 33% efficiency for the duty cycle of 0.6.•The sandwiched grating with enhanced efficiency.

The fused-silica sandwiched three-port grating under second Bragg angle incidence is presented with operation in transmission. To obtain a highly-efficient three-port grating for a working wavelength of 800 nm, the grating depth and period should be optimized by using rigorous coupled-wave analysis. With the optimized different three-port grating depths and periods, both TE-polarized and TM-polarized waves can be diffracted into three orders with nearly 33% efficiency for the given duty cycle of 0.6. Based on the grating parameters of numerical optimization, modal method may be employed to explain the physical mechanism of the beam propagation in the grating and analyze the splitting behavior. For the sandwiched three-port grating, it is feasible that the diffraction efficiencies can be enhanced for both TE and TM polarizations.