These beamsplitters consist of a pair of precision right-angle prisms carefully cemented or optically contacted (models with PC.21, PC.22, and PC.24 coating) together to minimize wavefront distortion. The hypotenuse of one of the prisms is coated with a multilayer dielectric polarizing beamsplitter coating optimized for laser lines. The four faces are antireflection coated with a multilayer dielectric coating to minimize surface reflection losses. 

Cube beamsplitters are formed by cementing two right angle prisms together. One of the two prisms has the partially reflective metal-dielectric coating applied to its hypotenuse. In Newport's cube beamsplitters the coated prism is marked with a visible dot. Incident light should enter the prism with the coated hypotenuse in order to minimize power passing through the optical cement. Alternatively, a beam entering via the uncoated prism results in more than triple the fluence in the cement (the transmitted component, plus a double pass by the reflected component). With higher power beams this can result in degradation of the cement.

An unpolarized beam is split into two orthogonal, linearly polarized components. P-polarized light is transmitted, while s-polarized light is reflected, both with negligible absorption. The extinction ratio is better than 1000:1 for beamsplitter made with N-BK7 glass, and better than 100:1 for beamsplitter made with UV fused silica. These cubes are recommended for use in pulsed laser systems and for purifying polarization in multimode, high-power lasers. Multilayer laser line coatings are offered for 13 laser wavelengths.