Compact and broadband polarization beam splitter based on a bridged hybrid plasmonic waveguide coupler on a thin-film lithium niobate

Abstract

We propose a compact and broadband polarization beam splitter (PBS) based on a thin-film lithium niobate. The hybrid plasmonic waveguide (HPW) is used as a bridge in a three-waveguide coupler to achieve large birefringence. A degree of phase-matching is introduced for optimization. The proposed PBS exhibits a 125-nm bandwidth (1495–1620 nm) of polarization extinction ratio (PER) over 20 dB or an 85-nm bandwidth (1515–1600 nm) of PER over 25 dB, with a device length of only 81 μm. An ultra-low insertion loss of 0.04 dB is achieved around the wavelength of 1550 nm. In addition, the proposed device exhibits high robustness of the fabrication tolerance.