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An ultracompact and broadband polarization beam splitter (PBS) is proposed by using an asymmetrical directional coupler composed of a hybrid plasmonic waveguide (HPW) and a regular silicon wire (RSW). By properly choosing the structural parameters, transverse-magnetic (TM) mode is cutoff for the RSW and phase-matching condition is only satisfied for transverse-electric (TE) mode. As a result, the input TM-mode in HPW directly passes through, while the input TE-mode in the same HPW is coupled into the RSW. Consequently, the two polarized modes can be effectively separated. Moreover, the present PBS shows fabrication-friendly design and its length can be significantly reduced, since the gap between the HPW and RSW can be shortened to zero. From the results, a ~2.6- \mu \textm -long PBS with a coupling length of 0.1~\mu \textm is achieved and its bandwidth is ~120 nm with a polarization extinction ratio over 14 dB, and an insertion loss below 1 dB for both polarizations. In addition, fabrication tolerances to the key structural parameters are analyzed in detail and field evolution through the designed PBS is also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The characteristics of the directional couplers based on the horizontal multiple-slotted waveguides with slanted sidewalls are analyzed in detail by using a mode solver based on the full-vectorial finite element method with perfectly matched layers absorbing boundary conditions. The coupling length of the directional coupler as functions of the structural parameters including waveguide spacing, sidewalls angle, the thickness and refractive index of the slot regions, both in quasi-TE and quasi-TM modes, is obtained. The effective indexes and the field distributions of the even and odd modes also are presented. The numerical results show that polarization-independent directional couplers can be realized by properly choosing structural and material parameters. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]