Plate beam splitters and symmetric multiports
Päivi Törmä, Igor Jex · Journal of Modern Optics · 1996
We show that for experimental arrangements with few nonvacuum inputs the fully symmetric multiport can be replaced by a simpler partially symmetric multiport. This device is equivalent to a beam splitter arrangement where the number of necessary beam splitters increases linearly with increasing number of inputs, that is it is considerably simpler to realize owning to the smaller number of components needed.