Design of multi-layer dielectric thin-film polarizing beam splitters by adaptive simulated annealing method

Polarizing beam splitters (PBS's) are essential components in optical systems such as liquid crystal displays, optical communication and optical recording. Adaptive simulated annealing (ASA) method is introduced here to design cubic PBS's. A cubic PBS used in visual spectral is shown first, which has the characteristics of broadband, wide angular field. Then a cubic PBS used in communication C-band is illustrated, which has the advantage of large polarization extinction ratio. For the designed PBS's, both the transmittance and reflectance can be utilized. It can be concluded that the ASA method can not only get significantly reasonable results but also show fast convergent speed and less memory occupation for designing PBS's thin film filters.