The amount of data that needs to be processed is increasing rapidly with the development and innovation of information technology. Nevertheless, the traditional unidirectional transmission device, which is only suitable for serial operation, is slow in processing data and is severely restricted in the field of information processing. In this study, a multidirectional coupler is designed and simulated through the finite-difference time-domain method to improve data computing speed. The coupler consists of a Y-branch silicon waveguide integrated with a single metallic catenary antenna placed on a silicon dioxide substrate. The light flow of the coupler can be coupled to multiple directions by controlling the polarization of the illuminated light. Then, the optical performance of the multidirectional coupler is enhanced via adopting the optimization algorithm to optimize the widths of the catenary. Furthermore, the polarization state of the incident light can be identified by detecting the power output from the ports of the coupler. Therefore, the multidirectional coupler might show enormous application prospects in photonic chips, quantum communication, on-chip information transmission, and processing.
Owing to the unique properties of strongly confined and enhanced electric fields, surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) provide a new platform for the realization of ultracompact plasmonic circuits. However, there are challenges in coupling light into SPPs efficiently and subsequently routing SPPs. Here, we propose a multi-directional SPPs splitter and polarization analyzer based on the catenary metasurface. Based on the abundant electromagnetic modes and geometric phase modulation principle of catenary structure, the device has realized high efficiency beam splitting for four different polarization states (x-polarization, y-polarization, LCP and RCP). The central wavelength of the device is 632 nm and the operation bandwidth can reach 70 nm (585-655 nm). Based on the phenomenon of SPPs beam splitting, we present a prototype of a polarization analyzer, which can detect the polarization state of incident light by adding photodetector with light intensity logic threshold in four directions.Moreover, by combining this device with dynamic polarization modulation techniques, it is possible to be served as a router or switch in integrated photonic circuits.
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