Breaking symmetries in ordered materials : spin polarized light transport in magnetized noncentrosymmetric 1D photonic crystals, and photonic gaps and fabrication of quasiperiodic structured materials from interference lithography

摘要

Effects of breaking various symmetries on optical properties in ordered materials have been studied. Photonic crystals lacking space-inversion and time-reversal symmetries were shown to display nonreciprocal dispersion relations, and to exhibit a remarkable set of symmetry-related properties. Even in 1D, these materials are found to display indirect photonic band gaps, backward wave propagating modes (antiparallel phase and group velocities) which enable negative refraction at the air-crystal interface, ability to allow bending light with perpendicular magnetic fields, unidirectional superprism effects, etc. By calculating the complex photonic band structure, we show that the gap modes differ fundamentally from the commonly assumed evanescent modes with purely imaginary wave vectors - solely due to symmetry, we show that the gaps of nonreciprocal photonic crystals have complex wave vectors with both imaginary components and non-zero, frequency dependent real components. This basic finding is further studied in the context of tunneling dynamics, by considering the problem of tunneling time for nonreciprocal photonic band gap barriers (the tunneling wave packet has an energy in the middle of the gap).