Reflectivity of Finite 3D GaAs Photonic Band Gap Crystals

Abstract

We study the optical reflectivity of three-dimensional (3D) photonic band gap crystals with increasing thickness. The crystals consist of GaAs plates with nanorod arrays that are assembled by an advanced stacking method into high-quality 3D woodpile structures. We observe intense and broad reflectivity peak with stop bands that correspond to a broad gap in the photonic band structures. The maximum reflectivity quickly reaches high values even for a few crystal layers. Remarkably, the bandwidth of the stop bands hardly decreases with increasing crystal thickness, in good agreement with FDTD simulations. This behavior differs remarkably from the large changes observed earlier in weakly interacting 3D photonic crystals. The nearly constant bandwidth and high reflectivity are rationalized by multiple Bragg interference that occurs in strongly interacting photonic band gap crystals, whereby the incident light scatters from multiple reciprocal lattice vectors simultaneously, in particular from oblique ones that are parallel to a longer crystal dimension and thus experience hardly any finite size effects. Our new insights have favorable consequences for the application of 3D photonic band gap crystals, notably since even thin structures reveal the full band gap functionality, including devices that shield quantum bits from vacuum fluctuations.

10 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Optical extinction due to intrinsic structural variations of photonic crystals
• Signature of a three-dimensional photonic band gap observed on silicon inverse woodpile photonic crystals
• The role of fabrication deviations on the photonic band gap of 3D inverse woodpile nanostructures
• All-optical octave-broad ultrafast switching of Si woodpile photonic band gap crystals
• Optical characterization and selective addressing of the resonant modes of a micropillar cavity with a white light beam
• Experimental probe of a complete 3D photonic band gap

Cited by in corpus (3)

• The local density of optical states in the 3D band gap of a finite photonic crystal
• Enhanced Absorption in thin and ultrathin silicon films by 3D photonic band gap back reflectors
• Optical Properties of Chiral Three-Dimensional Photonic Crystals made from Semiconductors