Polarization-independent wideband mixed metal dielectric reflective gratings

A polarization-independent wideband mixed metal dielectric grating with high efficiency of the -1st order is analyzed and designed in Littrow mounting. The mixed metal dielectric grating consists of a rectangular-groove transmission dielectric grating on the top layer and a highly reflective mirror composed of a connecting layer and a metal film. Simplified modal analysis is carried out, and it shows that when the phase difference accumulated by the two propagating modes is odd multiples of pi/2, the diffraction efficiency of the -1st order will be high. Selecting grating depth and duty cycle for satisfying the phase difference condition for both TE (electric field parallel to grooves) and TM (magnetic field parallel to grooves) polarizations, a polarization-independent high-efficiency grating can be designed. Using rigorous coupled-wave analysis and a simulated annealing algorithm, geometric parameters of the reflective grating are exactly obtained. The optimized grating for operation around a wavelength of 800 nm exhibits diffraction efficiencies higher than 90% for both TE and TM polarizations over a 120 nm wavelength bandwidth. The simplified modal analysis can be applied in other types of reflective gratings if the top layer is a dielectric transmission grating. (C) 2012 Optical Society of America