Spectral characteristics of a guided mode resonant filter with planes of incidence

Spectral responses of the guided mode resonant filter under different planes of incidence are comprehensively investigated in this paper. Commercially available software based on the rigorous coupled wave analysis method is used to perform the reflectance spectra. For normal incidence, there exists a pair of resonance bands, whose diffraction efficiencies can be tuned from 3.5% to 100% and 3.2% to 100% without shifting the resonant location as the plane of incidence (POI) angle ranges from 0° to 90°, whereas the resonances split into two branches as the POI angle decreases from 90° to 0° for oblique incidence. There exists a crossing point between the split bands that is proved to be polarization independent. Moreover, the physical mechanism of the above spectral characteristics is analyzed in detail by means of the wave vectors. The intensity-tunable feature under normal incidence can be used in the field of bioactive fluorescent protein dyes, displays, and signal processing. And the split characteristic under oblique incidence is applied to seek the polarization-independent wavelength, which has potential applications in the field of dense wavelength division multiplexing and laser devices.