Design of a Compact Polarization Splitter by Using Identical Coupled Silicon Nanowires

Design of an ultra-compact polarization splitter (PS) based on silicon-on-insulator platform is presented. The design incorporates two simply coupled identical silicon nanowires, which can be easily fabricated by using standard Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor technology and fully compatible with standard active silicon photonics platforms. It is shown here that a low-loss, 17.90 μm long compact PS, and wide bandwidth over the entire C-band can be achieved. Important waveguide design parameters such as the guide width, height, and separation between them have been optimized, and modal birefringence and wavelength dependence have been calculated by using a full-vectorial H-Field finite element method. The optical power transfer characteristics have been calculated by using a rigorous least squares boundary residual method.