Ultracompact TE-Pass Polarizer Based on a Hybrid Plasmonic Waveguide

An ultracompact and broadband TE-pass polarizer based on a hybrid plasmonic waveguide is proposed on the silicon-on-insulator platform. The optimized design has an active region as small as 0.8 μm, which is the shortest polarizer reported until now, and exhibits high polarization-dependent transmission imposing a TM mode cutoff while leaving the TE mode almost unaffected. Finite-difference time-domain simulation reveals an insertion loss <;1 dB and an extinction ratio of 19 dB. The extinction ratio could be further improved to 25 dB over 300-nm bandwidth, with an insertion loss of 2.5 dB.