Design of photonic crystals with multiple and combined band gaps

• Main Authors: Men, Han (Author), Nguyen, Ngoc Cuong (Contributor), Freund, Robert Michael (Contributor), Lim, K. M. (Author), Parrilo, Pablo A. (Contributor), Peraire, Jaime (Contributor)
• Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (Contributor), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (Contributor), Sloan School of Management (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Physical Society, 2011-07-20T19:39:24Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

 We present and use an algorithm based on convex conic optimization to design two-dimensional photonic crystals with large absolute band gaps. Among several illustrations we show that it is possible to design photonic crystals which exhibit multiple absolute band gaps for the combined transverse electric and magnetic modes. The optimized crystals show complicated patterns which are far different from existing photonic crystal designs. We employ subspace approximation and mesh adaptivity to enhance computational efficiency. For some examples involving two band gaps, we demonstrate the tradeoff frontier between two different absolute band gaps.