Characterization of Optical Negative-Index-Material Splitter

In this paper, an optical NIM splitter is introduced and numerically simulated using the beam propagation method (BPM). The NIM splitter has many features including the increased security provided to propagating signals compared to the conventional PIM splitter where the later depends on the mechanism of internal reflection while the NIM splitter depends on focusing the guided optical beam inside the guiding NIM region. Another feature is that from the simulation it is noticed that the relative efficiency of NIM power output {=(output NIM power-output PIM power)/output PIM power} is very high. In this particular study, the relative efficiency of NIM is 59.4% at a width between the splitter output branches of 56 mum. As the width between the output branches increases, the relative efficiency of NIM splitter significantly improves.