Polarization-independent directional coupler and polarization beam splitter based on asymmetric cross-slot waveguides.

The polarization dependence of a directional coupler (DC) based on asymmetric cross-slot waveguides is investigated. Due to structural birefringence, the coupling behaviors of the quasi-TE and quasi-TM modes in the DC vary with the waveguide geometry. A polarization-independent directional coupler (PIDC) and polarization beam splitter (PBS) are proposed by tailoring the ratio of the coupling length for quasi-TE and quasi-TM modes. The simulated results show that the coupling lengths of the designed PIDC and PBS are 8 and 28.25 μm, respectively. Both the PIDC and PBS show an insertion loss (IL) <0.7  dB on a bandwidth over 100 nm. The extinction ratios are ∼20  dB for PIDC and ∼14  dB for PBS. The fabrication-error tolerance of the practical devices is also discussed. In this study, we employ a commercial software tool for finite difference eigenmode and three-dimensional finite difference time domain methods to perform the numerical simulations.