A comparative study of band Faraday effects in 3D magnetized photonic crystals with different high-symmetry lattices with uniaxial materials

Abstract

In this paper, the band Faraday effects in three-dimensional (3D) magnetized plasma photonic crystals (MPPCs) composed of anisotropic dielectric (the uniaxial material) spheres immersed in uniform magnetized plasma background with various lattices including the face-centered-cubic (fcc), body-centered-cubic (bcc), and simple-cubic (sc) lattices are theoretically investigated by a modified plane wave expansion (PWE) method, as the Faraday effects of magnetized plasma are considered (the incidence electromagnetic wave vector is parallel to the external magnetic field at any time). The equations for calculating the anisotropic PBGs in the first irreducible Brillouin zone are theoretically deduced. The anisotropic PBGs and a flatbands region can be achieved as the uniaxial material introduced into 3D MPPCs. The 3D MPPCs with fcc, bcc, sc lattices will not exhibit a complete PBG unless the uniaxial material is introduced. The influences of the ordinary refractive index, extraordinary refractive index, filling factor, plasma frequency, and plasma cyclotron frequency (the external magnetic field) on the properties of anisotropic PBGs for 3D MPPCs with fcc, bcc, sc lattices are investigated in detail, respectively, and some corresponding physical explanations are also given. The numerical results show that the anisotropy can open partial band gaps in 3D MPPCs with fcc, bcc, sc lattices, and the complete PBGs can be obtained compared to 3D MPPCs containing of the conventional isotropic dielectric. It also is shown that the anisotropic PBGs can be tuned by the ordinary refractive index, extraordinary refractive index, plasma cyclotron frequency, filling factor, and plasma frequency, respectively. The larger relative bandwidth of complete PBG can be obtained by introducing the uniaxial material as 3D MPPCs are with high-symmetry lattices. This also provides a way to design the tunable MPPCs devices.

Keywords:

• magnetized plasma
• three-dimensional photonic crystals
• band Faraday effects
• plane wave expansion method

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the supports from the Chinese Natural Science Foundation [Grant No. 61307052]; Chinese Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education [Grant No. 20123218110017]; Jiangshu Province Science Foundation [Grant No. BK2011727]; in part by the Foundation of Aeronautical Science [No. 20121852030].