Metamaterial polarizer providing principally unlimited extinction

Polarizers are universal components deployed in diverse application fields including imaging, display, microscopy, interferometry, ellipsometry, and instrumentation. Here, we demonstrate design and fabrication of a new class of polarizers that are extremely compact and efficient. Based on an elemental low-loss single-resonant grating, we develop multilayer modules providing ultrahigh extinction ratio polarizers. The elemental polarizer contains a subwave-length periodic pattern of crystalline silicon on a quartz substrate. A stack of two dual-grating modules exhibits a measured extinction ratio (ER) of similar to 100,000 in a sparse 2-mm-thick device across a bandwidth of similar to 50 nm in the telecommunications spectral region. Theoretical computations indicate that extreme values of extinction are possible. Further development of the basic concepts explored herein may lead to a new class of practical polarizers with excellent attributes. (C) 2019 Optical Society of America