Abstract
Spectral polarization imaging technology is a novel optical imaging technique that not only enhances the amount of information acquired from targets, but also reduces background noise, which can capture target details and detect disguised targets. This paper presents a spectro-polarimetric device by integrating subwavelength gratings with Fabry-Perot (F-P) filter, which can obtain ultra-high spectral resolution and polarization extinction ratio with high control flexibly on both spectrum and polarization. A spectro-polarimetric filter (SPF) has been designed to obtain 4 spectral channels of stokes parameters simultaneously. Simulation results show that it has a spectral resolution (SR, ) of 217 and a polarization extinction ratio (PER) of . The polarization extinction ratio of subwavelength grating is measured to be over 500 PER with 90% transmission efficiency. The spectral resolution of all-dielectric F-P filter is measured to be 30 with 60% transmission efficiency in the long wave infrared band. The designed method is universal and can be used in a wide range of wavelength bands such as visible, infrared, and even terahertz. It has great potential applications in fields such as micro-polarization spectrometers and full-stokes polarization detection, benefiting from these advantages.
The human eye is most sensitive to the intensity and wavelength of light, there are abundant research results on these two properties of light, and researchers have developed and designed various spectral measurement devices for spectral imagin
Although SPI has significant potential in science and technology, its implementation in experiments remains highly challenging. Depending on the difference of spectral polarization modulation, SPI can be divided into non-simultaneous-SPI and simultaneous-SPI. The former relies on temporal or spatial modulation devices, but the long acquisition time and mechanical device motion reduce the acquisition accuracy, which is only suitable for static or quasi-static imaging. The latter requires the combined use of multiple optical elements such as beam splitters and polarizers, which leads to complex SPI system structures and difficult integration. Many efforts have been made to miniaturize and integrate SPI systems. However, even those state-of-the-art micro-nano photonic devices inevitably generate a large amount of signal crosstalk due to their inability to simultaneously possess high SR and PER. In addition, the complex preparation process and expensive cost also limit the industrialization and practicalization of these devices to a certain extent. For example, in 2016, Maguid et al. proposed an on-chip spectropolarimetric analysis system that is based on a photonic spin-controlled multifunctional shared-aperture antenna array. This system can measure both the spectrum characteristics and the polarization state of light simultaneously. However, its SR is only 13, with a PER of approximately 1
In this paper, we propose an SPF that integrates subwavelength metal gratings with an all-dielectric F-P filter. Since the boundary conditions of TE and TM polarized light in Maxwell's equations are different, their equivalent refractive indices also differ, and the F-P cavity can be modulated to produce different optical modes to obtain both high SR and PER simultaneously.
In this work, we employed the finite difference time domain (FDTD) method (Lumerical FDTD Solutions, Ansys) to calculate the transmission spectrum and electric field distributions of the proposed SPF. The mesh sizes for all simulation models were set to be 4 nm after the convergence tests. The incidence and polarization of light are shown in

Fig. 1 (a) Model of the SPF, the SPF with the subwavelength metal grating integrated on the substrate side (top) and partial enlarged view of the structure (bottom);(b) transmission spectra and PER of the SPF, the red solid line and black dashed line are the transmittances of the TM and TE, respectively, and the blue dotted line is the PER of the SPF;(c) the cross-sectional electric fields for the SPF at 10.4 μm;(d) the cross-sectional electric fields for the SPF at 10.6 μm of TE polarized light, the white dashed line is the dividing line between the upper and lower surfaces of the device, and the red dashed box is the grating position
图1 (a)光谱偏振分光器的模型,亚波长金属光栅集成在衬底侧(上图)的光谱偏振分光器示意图和结构局部放大图(下图);(b)器件的透射光谱和偏振消光比,红色实线和黑色虚线分别为TM和TE的透射率,蓝色虚线为器件的偏振消光比;(c)器件在10.4 μm时的截面电场;(d)器件在10.6 μm 的TE偏振光下的截面电场,白色虚线为器件上下表面分界线,红色虚线框为光栅位置
All-dielectric F-P filters are extensively utilized in spectral detection and other domains owing to their highly tailored filtering capabilities, effortless integration, and superior spatial resolutio
In order to achieve high SR and PER simultaneously, we propose an SPF that integrates subwavelength metal gratings with an all-dielectric F-P filter.
The structure of SPF can be expressed as Sub|G(LH
The primary metrics for evaluating the performance of the SPF include the SR, PER, and peak transmittance. In this section, we will discuss several major factors that affect the performance of spectrally polarized spectroscopic devices and propose some methods to optimize the device performance. The SPF with the subwavelength metal gratings integrated on the substrate side can fabricate all-dielectric F-P filters based on already completed subwavelength gratings with low process difficulty, so this design was ultimately adopted to fabricate the SPF in this paper. In order to obtain spectrally polarized devices with excellent performance, we simplified and analyzed the model by means of the effective medium theory (EMT) and the effective interface method and optimized the structural parameters of the device by FDTD method.
, | (1) |
. | (2) |

Fig. 2 (a) Schematic diagram of the effective interface method;(b) schematic diagram of the effective medium theory;(c) equivalent refractive index of subwavelength Ag gratings at TE and TM polarized incidence, the red solid line and the blue solid line are the real and imaginary parts of the refractive index of the equivalent medium, respectively
图2 (a)等效界面法原理图;(b)有效介质理论示意图;(c)TE和TM偏振入射下亚波长Ag光栅的等效折射率,其中红色实线和蓝色实线分别为等效介质折射率的实部和虚部
As the device operates in transmission mode, our primary concern is its overall transmission .
, | (3) |
the transmittance of the SPF can be fully determined by knowing only , , , , and , , .
At last, the total transmittance can be expressed as the following form:
. | (4) |
The transfer matrix method can easily calculate the reflectance and transmittance of interface 1 and interface 2. However, since the transfer matrix method cannot be directly applied to the grating structure, the EMT is used to simplify the calculation by replacing the grating layer with a layer of uniform medium, as shown in
, | (5) |
where is the duty cycle of the grating (), and are the material refractive index and extinction coefficient, respectively, and the subscripts 1 and 2 represent the grating material and the material in the grating gap, respectively. If the material in the grating gap is air, then and . For example, we calculated the effective refractive index of a subwavelength Ag grating with a period of 400 nm and a duty cycle of 0.5 for TE and TM polarized light incidence using the refractive index of silver, as shown in
Changing the structural parameters of the grating changes its equivalent refractive index and thus changes R and T of interface 1 and interface 2. According to
. | (6) |
Therefore, the transmission wavelength, spectral resolution and polarization extinction ratio of the SPF can be optimized by regulating the period, duty cycle and thickness of the subwavelength grating, as well as designing the upper and lower reflective layer films.
The structure of the SPF can be expressed as Sub|G(LH

Fig. 3 (a) The TM transmittance of the SPF with different m and n;(b-c) transmittance and PER of the central wavelength when the grating period varies from 0.2 μm to 2 μm;(d-e) transmittance and PER of the central wavelength when the grating duty cycle varies from 0.1 to 0.9;(f-g) transmittance and PER of the central wavelength when the grating thickness varies from 50 nm to 500 nm, the red line represents the transmittance of TM polarized light, the black line represents the transmittance of TE polarized light, the blue line represents the polarization extinction ratio, and the green line represents the peak position of TM polarized light
图3 (a)不同m、n下器件的TM光透射率;(b-c)光栅周期在0.2 ~ 2 μm范围内,中心波长的透射率和偏振消光比;(d-e)当光栅占空比在0.1 ~ 0.9范围内变化时,中心波长的透射率和偏振消光比;(f-g)当光栅厚度在50 ~ 500 nm范围内变化时,中心波长的透射率和偏振消光比,其中红线表示TM偏振光的透射率,黑线表示TE偏振光的透射率,蓝线表示偏振消光比,绿线表示TM偏振光的峰值位置
A grating is a diffractive optical element that modulates light waves by changing the spatial structure of the propagation medium. The optical properties of the grating are determined by its diffraction level. When the grating period is much smaller than the incident light wavelength, the grating will only produce zero-level diffraction which develops many novel phenomena such as guided-mode resonance and surface plasmon resonance. The polarization-selective properties of subwavelength metal gratings also arise from the excitation and coupling of surface plasmon polaritons in the grating structure.
Duty cycle and thickness are two other vital parameters of gratings and are significant directions for optimizing SPFs.
Benefiting from the design flexibility, we designed high-performance on-chip integrated SPFs, as shown in

Fig. 4 (a) Schematic diagram of the on-chip integrated SPFs, each of which consists of four polarization superpixel with polarization angles of 0°, 45°, 90°, and 135°, respectively, each polarization superpixel is composed of 4 spectral channels, which are represented by small squares of different colors in the figure;(b) the SEM image of the grating;(c) the cross-sectional SEM image of the grating;(d) experimental spectrum and PER of grating and all-dielectric F-P filter;(e) background noise of the measurement system and TE polarized light spectrum of the grating
图4 (a)片上集成光谱偏振分光器示意图,每个光谱偏振分光器由四个偏振超像元组成,偏振角分别为0°、45°、90°和135°,每个偏振超像元由4个光谱通道组成,在图中用不同颜色的小方块表示;(b)光栅的扫描电子显微镜图像;(c)光栅横截面的扫描电子显微镜图像;(d)光栅和全介质F-P滤波器的实验光谱图和偏振消光比;(e)测量系统的背景噪声和光栅的TE偏振光谱
Infrared spectral polarization imaging (IR-SPI) can distinguish background and targets based on thermal radiation differences regardless of weather conditions and sunlight, while the addition of spectral and polarization information greatly improves the imaging system's ability to identify specific targets in complex environments, such as polarization and fusion imaging. Polarization information is usually described by the Stokes parameters (, , , ):
. | (7) |
In practical application, is usually set to zero because the component of circular polarization is very small. Thus, the Stokes parameters of the target can be obtained by rotating the polarizer or using an array of polarizers with different angles, and further adding a filter to the imaging system can obtain the polarization information of a specific wavelength. And using the Stokes parameters, the degree of polarization (DOLP) and angle of polarization (AOP) of the target can be calculated.
. | (8) |
However, using our designed SPFs and detector for integration can eliminate these tedious steps. The Stokes parameters of four spectral channels can be obtained in one imaging, which greatly simplifies the complexity of the SPI system. The experiment verifies the feasibility of SPFs applied to the field of SPI and provides a new way to miniaturize real-time spectral polarization imaging systems.
In summary, we have designed an ultra-high performance SPF by integrating subwavelength metal gratings on all-dielectric F-P filters. When TE polarized light is incident, the metal layer property of the subwavelength metal grating enables it to reflect TE polarized light efficiently, and when TM polarized light is incident, the dielectric layer property of the subwavelength metallic grating enables it to transmit TM polarized light efficiently, with F-P resonance dominating the mode. The device enables both wavelength and polarization selection, and the two characteristics can be independently regulated. The experimental results show that our grating has a PER of over 500 and a transmission efficiency of up to 90% and the all-dielectric F-P filter has a SR of 30 and a transmission efficiency of 60% for the long-wave infrared band, which manifests its potential in the field of SPI. At the same time, due to its compactness, integration, miniaturization and compatibility, our spectral polarization device is expected to provide high-performance real-time spectral and polarization monitoring for more advanced applications and offer a new solution for the development of multi-mode detection chips.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to the support of Soft Matter Nanofab (SMN180827), ShanghaiTech University Quantum Device Lab. Thanks to Prof. Wenjuan Wang for providing the software (Lumerical FDTD Solutions, Ansys).
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