Investigation of anisotropic photonic band gaps in three-dimensional magnetized plasma photonic crystals containing the uniaxial material

Abstract

In this paper, the dispersive properties of three-dimensional (3D) magnetized plasma photonic crystals (MPPCs) composed of anisotropic dielectric (the uniaxial material) spheres immersed in homogeneous magnetized plasma background with face-centered-cubic (fcc) lattices are theoretically investigated by the plane wave expansion method, as the Voigt effects of magnetized plasma are considered. The equations for calculating the anisotropic photonic band gaps (PBGs) in the first irreducible Brillouin zone are theoretically deduced. The anisotropic PBGs and two flatbands regions can be obtained. The effects of the ordinary-refractive index, extraordinary-refractive index, filling factor, plasma frequency, and external magnetic field on the dispersive properties of the 3D MPPCs are investigated in detail, respectively, and some corresponding physical explanations are also given. The numerical results show that the anisotropy can open partial band gaps in 3D MPPCs with fcc lattices and the complete PBGs can be found compared to the conventional 3D MPPCs doped by the isotropic material. The bandwidths of PBGs can be tuned by introducing the magnetized plasma into 3D PCs containing the uniaxial material. It is also shown that the anisotropic PBGs can be manipulated by the ordinary-refractive index, extraordinary-refractive index, filling factor, plasma frequency, and external magnetic field, respectively. The locations of flatbands regions cannot be manipulated by any parameters except for the plasma frequency and external magnetic field. Introducing the uniaxial material can obtain the complete PBGs as the 3D MPPCs with high symmetry and also provides a way to design the tunable devices.