POLARIZATION-INDEPENDENT OPTICAL BRANCHING MODULE

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an optical branching module capable of branching light without depending upon a plane of polarization. SOLUTION: Incident light is made incident on a beam splitter 3. Its transmission light and reflected light are made incident on other beam splitters 4, 5 having the same polarization dependence characteristics as that of the beam splitter 3. Light which has repeated transmission and refection by once is assigned as branching light L1, L2. This offsets polarization dependence to eliminate the polarization dependence. COPYRIGHT: (C)2003,JPO