A transmission polarizing beam splitter grating

We present the design, fabrication, and test of a polarizing beam splitter grating for operation at 633 nm under a 45 degrees angle of incidence. This component is compact and its fabrication is reproducible enough to be inte grated in optical reconfigurable interconnect systems. For TE polarization, the incident beam is undeflected whereas TM beams exhibit a 90 degrees dev iation. We used electromagnetic theory to optimize the performance of the p olarizing beam splitter grating. We employed direct electron beam writing a nd reactive ion etching to fabricate a polarizing beam splitter etched in a TiO2 layer deposited on a glass substrate. Experimental results show that diffraction efficiencies more than 80% and extinction ratios above 100 are manufacturable with present technology.