Ultra-Broadband Hyperuniform Disordered Silicon Photonic Polarizers

Abstract

We present the first experimental demonstration at the optical telecommunication band of near-isotropic and transverse-electric (TE) photonic bandgap (PBG) in a hyperuniform disordered photonic structured (HUDPS) wall network. Next, we propose and demonstrate state-of-the-art performance of a hyperuniform disordered silicon photonic (HUDSiP) polarizer. The TE mode is blocked by the combined effects of reflection due to a wide PBG in the optimal wall network structure, scattering, and radiative bandedge resonances. The transverse-magnetic (TM) mode is allowed to pass through with a small insertion loss (IL). A 12.9-μm-long HUDSiP polarizer is experimentally demonstrated with an ultrabroad bandwidth of 240 nm (1440-1680 nm) when the extinction ratio (ER) ≥ 30 dB and IL ≤ 3 dB for the TM mode. The measured spectrally averaged ER and IL of the TM mode are 41.4 dB and 0.8 dB (0.4 dB at 1550 nm), respectively. A 38.7-μm-long HUDSiP polarizer shows an average IL for the TE mode of 54.9 dB and ER of 53.0 dB. Tests of 40-Gbps on-off-keying data transmission through the HUDSiP polarizers show clear eye diagrams. The HUDSiP polarizers are promising in polarization filtering in the large-scale polarization-sensitive/diverse silicon photonic circuits for high-speed optical interconnects.