Dispersive and resonant properties of finite one-dimensional photonic band gap structures

Abstract

The report is a review of work one-dimensional photonic band gap (PBG) materials, carried out by the Quantum Optics Group at the US Army Aviation and Missile Command during the past few years. This work has benefited from national and international collaborations between academic, industrial, and governmental research organizations. The research effort has benefited from a multifaceted approach that combined innovative, theoretical methods with fabrication techniques in order to address the physics of structures of finite length, i.e., the description of spatio-temporal linear and nonlinear dynamics and boundary conditions. In this work we will review what we consider three major breakthroughs: (a) the discovery of transparent metals; (b) discovery of critical phase matching conditions in PBG structures for second harmonic and nonlinear frequency conversion; (c) development of a PBG true time delay device. Our report addresses linear and nonlinear wave propagation in PBG materials, one-dimensional structures in particular. Most investigators generally address two and three-dimensional structures. We choose one-dimensional systems because in the past they have proven to be quite challenging and have pointed the way to the new physical phenomena that are the subject of this report. In addition, one-dimensional systems can be used as a blueprint for higher dimensional structures, where the work is necessarily much more computationally intensive, and the physics much less transparent as a result.