Polarizing beam splitter utilising surface plasmon waves

The authors report a novel configuration of a polarising beam splitter of polished type. The polarisation splitting is achieved by making use of the polarisation sensitive surface plasmon-wave resonance in the coupling region. Two pieces of high-birefringence fibres, single-mode at 633 nm have been aligned with their slow axes perpendicular to the polished surface. Arcs of 25 cm radius were engraved onto two glass blocks and the fibres firmly bonded to them. The blocks were then polished to a few microns from the core. A thin Al film (25 nm) was deposited onto the one block. The transmission characteristics and the efficiency of coupling to plasmon modes were tested for two wavelengths: 633 nm and 850 nm. Results are given