Beam splitters are classified by construction (plate, cube, pellicle, polka dot) and by function (standard, non-polarizing, polarizing, dichroic). Construction determines ghosting, damage threshold, and form factor. Function determines how polarization and wavelength are. Beamsplitters are optical components used to split incident light at a designated ratio into two separate beams. Characteristics of Beam Splitters 3. We use elementary laws of classical and quantum optics to obtain general relations among the magnitudes and phases of these probability amplitudes.