Design of fused-silica rectangular transmission gratings for polarizing beam splitter based on modal method

Examples of optimal designs for a fused-silica transmitted grating with high-intensity tolerance are discussed. It has the potential of placing up to 99% incident polarized light in a single diffraction order. The modal method has been used to analyze the effective indices for TE and TM polarization propagating through the grating region, and the eigenvalue equation of the modal method is transformed to a new form. It is shown that the effective indices of the first two modes depend on the value of the period under Littrow mounting with filling factor f = 0.5. The polarization properties of the polarizing beam splitter are analyzed by rigorous coupled-wave analysis (RCWA) at the wavelength of 1.064 mu m. The optimal design perfectly matches the RCWA simulation result. c 2010 Optical Society of America