Photonic crystal heterostructure engineering in an envelope picture

摘要

Photonic crystal heterostructures - concatenations of photonic crystals differing in lattice type or period or in basis dielectric constant profile - have recently been introduced as a way to deploy photonic crystals to realize complex optical functions. These are analogous to the semiconductor heterostructures which have been successfully employed in high-performance functional electronic devices. Their fabrication has been demonstrated. However, there are no efficient and exact simulation tools for these structures. Solving Maxwell's equations in this system is very time and memory intensive since it consists of a large number of unit cells. A simulation method is needed that will take advantage of the periodic sections of the heterostructure, but allows junctions that break the periodicity.