Study of the dispersive properties of three-dimensional photonic crystals with diamond lattices containing metamaterials

Abstract

In this paper, the dispersive properties of three-dimensional photonic crystals with diamond lattices containing isotropic dielectric and metamaterials are theoretically studied by a modified plane wave expansion method. In order to simplify the study, one only kind of the metamaterials is considered—the epsilon-negative materials. The eigenvalue equations of their structure depending on the diamond lattice realization (spheres with epsilon-negative materials inserted in the dielectric background) are deduced. A photonic band gap (PBG), a flatband region, and the first two stop band gaps (SBGs) above the flatband region in the Γ–X and Γ–L directions are found to appear. The results show that the upper edge of the flatband region cannot be tuned by any parameters except for the electronic plasma frequency. The PBG and first SBGs above the flatband region in the Γ–X and Γ–L directions for PCs can be modulated by the filling factor, relative dielectric constant and electronic plasma frequency, respectively. However, the damping factor has no effect on the locations of first PBG and the SBGs above the flatband region in the Γ–X and Γ–L directions.