Broadband and ultra-broadband polarization rotators with adiabatic modular design

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.