Negative refraction and subwavelength focusing using photonic crystals

Abstract

In this article, we present an experimental and numerical study of novel optical properties of two-dimensional dielectric photonic crystals (PCs) which exhibit negative refraction. We investigate two mechanisms which utilize the band structure of the PC to generate a negative effective index of refraction (neff < 0) and demonstrate the negative refraction experimentally. To the isotropic extend of neff , different PC slab structures are employed to focus the radiation of a point source. It is shown experimentally that the PC can generate an image of the source with subwavelength resolution in the vicinity of the PC interface. Using a different PC, one can also obtain a far field focusing. In the latter case, we explicitly show the flat lens behavior of the structure. These examples indicate that PC-based lenses can surpass limitations of conventional lenses and lead to novel optics applications.