Broadband Multifunctional Plasmonic Polarization Converter based on Multimode Interference Coupler

Abstract

We propose a multifunctional integrated plasmonic-photonic polarization converter for polarization demultiplexing in an indium-phosphide membrane on silicon platform. Using a compact 1$\times$4 multimode interference coupler, this device can provide simultaneous half-wave plate and quarter-wave plate (HWP and QWP) functionalities, where the latter generates two quasi-circular polarized beams with opposite spins and topological charges of $l$ = $\pm$1. Our device employs a two-section HWP to obtain a very large conversion efficiency of $\ge$ 91% over the entire C to U telecom bands, while it offers a conversion efficiency of $\ge$ 95% over $\sim$ 86% of the C to U bands. Our device also illustrates QWP functionality, where the transmission contrast between the transverse electric and transverse magnetic modes is $\approx$ 0 dB over the whole C band and 55% of the C to U bands. We expect this device can be a promising building block for the realization of ultracompact on-chip polarization demultiplexing and lab-on-a-chip biosensing platforms. Finally, our proposed device allows the use of the polarization and angular momentum degrees of freedom, which makes it attractive for quantum information processing.

References in corpus (2)

• Design of an integrated hybrid plasmonic-photonic device for all-optical switching and reading of spintronic memory
• Optical Reading of Nanoscale Magnetic Bits in an Integrated Photonic Platform

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Integrated magneto-photonic non-volatile multi-bit memory