Broadband silicon photonic polarimeter using subwavelength grating metamaterial waveguides

Abstract

In this work, we address a chip-scale polarimeter in which the measurement frame remains optimal over a wavelength range of 200 nm in the presence of Gaussian and Poisson shot noise. The optimization includes equalized variances of each Stokes parameter, and minimal equally weighted variance. The proposed device contains only four photodetectors, which is the minimum number required for full-Stokes reconstruction. It includes broadband asymmetric power splitters and phase shifters. Notably, the broadband phase shifters are designed based on the subwavelength grating waveguides.