Polarization dependence of diffraction gratings that have total internal reflection facets

The total internal reflection (TIR) grating is an integrated optical diffraction grating designed to achieve high efficiency for the retrodiffracted order by use of total internal reflection twice within a groove of the grating rather than by use of metalized grooves. Numerical calculations are presented for both TE and TM polarizations of incident light. When the TIR grating was used in the -mth-order Littrow mount with m > 13, the diffraction efficiency was found to decrease linearly with 1/m. The polarization dependence of the retrodif fraction efficiency exceeds 3 dB for TIR gratings formed in silica glass (n = 1.5) but is very small for gratings with InP-based technology (n = 3.2). © 2000 Optical Society of America.