Photonic Crystals: Manipulating Light with Periodic Structures

Abstract

AbstractThe new physical phenomena being discovered in photonic crystals during the last two decades have revealed that photonic crystals enable light manipulation, strong light confinement, slow light propagation, and enhanced light-matter interaction, which are unique and cannot be achieved in conventional materials. Due to these properties and their potential technological applications, photonic crystals have become the subject of intense research. In this chapter, starting with a brief review of the photonic crystal concept, we describe fundamental features, fabrication technologies, experimental advances, and potential impact of photonic crystals. The progress achieved in photonic crystal research is closely connected to the evolution of device design concepts through a deeper understanding of nature of photonic bands. We describe detailed methods for the numerical and experimental determination of the photonic band structure that are useful and essential for analyzing photonic crystals as well as for understanding and engineering their unprecedented optical properties. This chapter closes with a discussion of the exciting possibilities of a photonic crystal in nonlinear light-matter interactions and their device applications.KeywordsPhotonic CrystalPhotonic Crystal StructurePhotonic Crystal WaveguideBand DispersionFinite Difference Time Domain MethodThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.