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Complete photonic bandgaps in 12-fold symmetric quasicrystals

Nature volume 404, pages 740–743 (2000)Cite this article

Abstract

Photonic crystals are attracting current interest for a variety of reasons, such as their ability to inhibit the spontaneous emission of light1,2. This and related properties arise from the formation of photonic bandgaps, whereby multiple scattering of photons by lattices of periodically varying refractive indices acts to prevent the propagation of electromagnetic waves having certain wavelengths. One route to forming photonic crystals is to etch two-dimensional periodic lattices of vertical air holes into dielectric slab waveguides3,4,5,6,7. Such structures can show complete photonic bandgaps8,9,10, but only for large-diameter air holes in materials of high refractive index (such as gallium arsenide, n = 3.69), which unfortunately leads to significantly reduced optical transmission when combined with optical fibres of low refractive index. It has been suggested that quasicrystalline (rather than periodic) lattices can also possess photonic bandgaps11,12,13,14. Here we demonstrate this concept experimentally and show that it enables complete photonic bandgaps—non-directional and for any polarization—to be realized with small air holes in silicon nitride (n = 2.02), and even glass (n = 1.45). These properties make photonic quasicrystals promising for application in a range of optical devices14,15,16,17,18.

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Figure 1: Scheme of the basic quasicrystal elementary unit and its implementation in a planar waveguide.
Figure 2: Theoretical calculation.
Figure 3: Experimental results.
Figure 4: Angular dependence of the primary PBG and reproducibility of transmittance.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the holey-fibre group of the Southampton Optoelectronics Research Centre for supplying samples. This work was supported by the EPSRC, the HEFCE and the University of Southampton.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electronics and Computer Science,

    M. E. Zoorob, M. D. B. Charlton, G. J. Parker & J. J. Baumberg

  2. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Southampton, Southampton, S017 1BJ, UK

    J. J. Baumberg & M. C. Netti

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  1. M. E. Zoorob
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  3. G. J. Parker
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Correspondence to G. J. Parker.

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Zoorob, M., Charlton, M., Parker, G. et al. Complete photonic bandgaps in 12-fold symmetric quasicrystals. Nature 404, 740–743 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35008023

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