Flexible and broadband graphene polarizer based on surface silicon-core microfiber

A graphene-coated polarizer based on the surface silicon-core microfiber has been proposed and numerically analyzed. The numerical discussion shows that our proposed polarizer serves alternatively as TM-pass or TE-pass polarizers depending on the change of the radius of the silicon core. Their polarization extinction ratios can be adjusted by the structure parameters of the ellipticity, the major and minor diameter of the microfiber, and the thickness of the graphene film. When the length of the graphene film is 1.5 mm, extinction ratios of similar to 30 and similar to 32 dB can be respectively achieved at the wavelength of 1.55 mu m for TMpass and TE-pass polarizers. The operation wavelength range of the TM- and TE- pass polarizer could cover similar to 400 and similar to 1000 nm, respectively. Our proposed polarizer provides a flexible way to manipulate the polarization of the light in the fiber and highly integrated optical fiber system. (C) 2017 Optical Society of America