Photonic Band Gap Structures: Studies of the Transmission Coefficient

Abstract

Recently, there has been growing interest in the development of Photonic Band Gap (PBG) materials [1–21]. These are periodic dielectric materials exhibiting frequency regions where electromagnetic (EM) waves cannot propagate. The reason for the interest on PBG materials arises from the possible applications of these materials in several scientific and technical areas such as filters, optical switches, cavities, design of more efficient lasers, etc. [1, 2]. Most of the research effort has been concentrated in the development of two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) PBG materials consisting of positive and frequency independent dielectrics [1–18] because, in this case, one can neglect the possible problems related to the absorption [15, 19]. However, there is more recent work on PBG materials constructed from metals [20, 21] which suggests that these metallic structures may be very useful in the low frequency regions. In these regions, the metals become almost perfect reflectors.