In this paper we address the question how to design photonic crystals that have photonic band gaps around a finite number of given frequencies. In such materials electromagnetic waves with these frequencies can not propagate; this makes them interesting for a large number of applications. We focus on crystals made of periodically ordered thin rods with high contrast dielectric properties. We show that the material parameters can be chosen in such a way that transverse magnetic modes with given frequencies can not propagate in the crystal. At the same time, for any frequency belonging to a predefined range there exists a transverse electric mode that can propagate in the medium. These results are related to the spectral properties of a weighted Laplacian and of an elliptic operator of divergence type both acting in $L^2(mathbb{R}^2)$. The proofs rely on perturbation theory of linear operators, Floquet-Bloch analysis, and properties of Schroedinger operators with point interactions.
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