Broadband and ultra-broadband polarization rotators with adiabatic modular design

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates broadband and ultra-broadband polarization rotators using a modular adiabatic design with arrays of half-wave plates, achieving wide spectral performance through gradual polarization evolution.

Contribution

It introduces a novel modular adiabatic approach for polarization rotation, utilizing arrays of half-wave plates for enhanced spectral bandwidth.

Findings

Successful experimental implementation of broadband and ultra-broadband rotators

Performance attributed to adiabatic polarization evolution

Effective use of multi-order and achromatic half-wave plates

Abstract

We experimentally demonstrate a broadband and an ultra-broadband spectral bandwidth polarization rotators. Both polarization rotators have modular design, that is, they are comprised of an array of half-wave plates rotated to a given angle. We show that the broadband and ultra-broadband performance of the polarization rotators is due to the adiabatic nature of the light polarization evolution. In this paper we experimentally investigate the performance of broadband and ultra-broadband polarization rotators comprising of ten multi-order half-wave plates or ten commercial achromatic half-wave plates, respectively. The half-wave plates in the arrays are rotated gradually with respect to each other starting from an initial alignment between the fast polarization axis of the first one and the incoming linearly polarized light, to the desired polarization rotation angle.