No Arabic abstract
Specific features of the defect modes of cholesteric liquid crystals (CLCs) with an isotropic defect, as well as their photonic density of states, Q factor, and emission, have been investigated. The effect of the thicknesses of the defect layer and the system as a whole, the position of the defect layer, and the dielectric boundaries on the features of the defect modes have been analyzed.
We report for the first time the bandgap engineering of Tamm plasmon photonic crystals - Tamm plasmon structures of which the metalic layer is periodically patterned into lattice of subwavelength period. By adopting a double period design, we evidenced experimentally a complete photonic bandgap up to $150,nm$ in the telecom range. Moreover, such design offers a great flexibility to tailor on-demand, and independently, the band-gap size from $30,nm$ to $150,nm$ and its spectral position within $50,nm$. Finally, by implementing a defect cavity within the Tamm plasmon photonic crystal, an ultimate cavity of $1.6mu m$ supporting a single highly confined Tamm mode is experimentally demonstrated. All experimental results are in perfect agreement with numerical calculations. Our results suggests the possibility to engineer novel band dispersion with surface modes of hybrid metalic/dielectric structures, thus open the way to Tamm plasmon towards applications in topological photonics, metamaterials and parity symmetry physics.
As an attractive degree of freedom in electromagnetic (EM) waves, the orbital angular momentum (OAM) enables infinite communication channels for both classical and quantum communications. The exploration of OAM generation inspires various designs involving spiral phase plates, antenna arrays, metasurfaces, and computer-generated holograms. In this work, we theoretically and experimentally demonstrate an approach to producing OAM carrying EM waves by a point defect in three-dimensional (3D) photonic crystals (PCs). Simultaneous excitation of two vibrational-defect states with an elaborately engineered phase retardation generates a rotational state carrying OAM. Through converting guided waves in a line defect to localized waves in a point defect and then to radiated vortex waves in free space, the lowest four OAM-mode emitters, i.e., OAM indices of 1, -1, 2, and -2, are successfully realized. This work offers a physical mechanism to generate OAM by PCs, especially when the OAM generation is to be integrated with other designs.
We study the group velocity of light in layer-by-layer chiral photonic crystals composed of dielectrics and metals. Through studying the band structures with an extended-zone scheme that is given by a Fourier analysis, we show the existence of negative group velocity in the proposed chiral structures. The physical mechanism is interpreted with the help of a simplified model that has an analytical solution. The iso-frequency contours of the photonic band structure suggest that the negative group velocity can lead to either positive or negative refraction, depending on the orientation of the medium interface. We propose a feasible realization of such kind of photonic crystals. Computational results on the proposed realization are consistent with that of the simplified models.
We show that point defects in two-dimensional photonic crystals can support bound states in the continuum (BICs). The mechanism of confinement is a symmetry mismatch between the defect mode and the Bloch modes of the photonic crystal. These BICs occur in the absence of bandgaps and therefore provide an alternative mechanism to confine light. Furthermore, we show that such BICs can propagate in a fiber geometry and exhibit arbitrarily small group velocity which could serve as a platform for enhancing non-linear effects and light-matter interactions in structured fibers.
Quadrupole topological phases, exhibiting protected boundary states that are themselves topological insulators of lower dimensions, have recently been of great interest. Extensions of these ideas from current tight binding models to continuum theories for realistic materials require the identification of quantized invariants describing the bulk quadrupole order. Here we identify the analog of quadrupole order in Maxwells equations for a photonic crystal (PhC) and identify quadrupole topological photonic crystals formed through a band inversion process. Unlike prior studies relying on threaded flux, our quadrupole moment is quantized purely by crystalline symmetries, which we confirm using three independent methods: analysis of symmetry eigenvalues, numerical calculations of the nested Wannier bands, and the expectation value of the quadrupole operator. Furthermore, through the bulk-edge correspondence of Wannier bands, we reveal the boundary manifestations of nontrivial quadrupole phases as quantized polarizations at edges and bound states at corners. Finally, we relate the nontrivial corner states to the emergent phenomena of quantized fractional corner charges and a filling anomaly as first predicted in electronic systems. Our work paves the way to further explore higher-order topological phases in nanophotonic systems and our method of inducing quadrupole phase transitions is also applicable to other wave systems, such as electrons, phonons and polaritons.