Unpolarized narrow-band filtering with resonant gratings

Periodically corrugated planar waveguides present sharp peaks in their reflectivity spectrum due to the excitation, by the incident beam, of an eigenmode of the structure. This property can be used to design free-space narrow-band filters. However, the extreme sensitivity of the resonances with respect to the angle and polarization under oblique incidence, has prevented, up to now, the development of efficient filters with this approach. We succeed in getting round these limitations by exiting four eigenmodes at the same time, and by modifying deeply the eigenmodes properties with an appropriate periodic corrugation. (C) 2005 American Institute of Physics.