Abstract

There has been a great deal of recent interest in systems which exhibit periodic dielectric properties. Over the last decade, numerous examples of such systems have been constructed, some with rather complicated three-dimensional structure. Because of diffraction off of the periodic structure, such systems can exhibit a photonic band gap, a region of the spectrum where no propagating electromagnetic waves can exist. Structures with appropriate symmetries could exhibit a band gap at a particular frequency regardless of the angle of incidence of the radiation, i.e., a 3-dimensional band gap.

© 1999 Optical Society of America