Interplay of Order and Disorder in the High-Energy Optical Response of Three-Dimensional Photonic Crystals

GABRIEL LOZANO, LUIS A. DORADO, HERNÁN MÍGUEZ AND RICARDO A. DEPINE

Optical Properties of Photonic Structures: Interplay of Order and Disorder (Series in Optics and Optoelectronics)

CRC Press Taylor & Francis

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2012; p. 301 - 322

In this chapter, we present an overview of the different optical effects that can be observed when the wavelength of light is on the order of or smaller than the lattice parameter of a 3D PC made of dielectric spheres. We will analyze the origin of such phenomena as well as how they are affected by the presence of different amounts of disorder. Anomalous specular reflectance and ballistic transmittance, diffusely scattered light, and optical diffraction are among the phenomena that will be studied. Emphasis will be put on the analysis of the sensitivity of the optical response to small variations of the structural parameters. Therefore, the chapter is organized as follows. In Section 3.7.2, we present a brief description of the technique used to fabricate the artificial opals whose optical properties will be analyzed in this chapter. In Section 3.7.3, an overview of the vector KKR method used to calculate the optical response of artificial opals in the high-energy range is presented. Farfield results obtained are addressed in Section 3.7.4. In particular, we analyze the interplay between crystal size and disorder effects in the high-energy range, a dramatic effect beingfound on the reflectance spectra of thicker crystals. We also present a complete descriptionof nonspecular diffracted beams. The optical patterns obtained from artificial opals when analyzed using scanning near-field optical microscopy (SNOM) are shown in Section 3.7.5. Finally, in Section 3.7.6 we emphasize and discuss some of the more interesting results addressed here.