Abstract
Photonic crystals are artificial materials with periodic permittivity. The major characteristic of photonic crystals is photonic band-gap. According to the difference of dimension in space, there are one, two and three dimension photonic crystals. Due to its particular characteristics, photonic crystal can be used to make devices with high performance, which are based on totally new theories or instruments can't be manufactured before.
Left-handed material (LHM) is a new kind of artificial material with both negative dielectric permittivity and negative magnetic permeability. Recently, LHM has attracted much attention for its unusual electromagnetic wave properties and extensive applications. If we consider photonic crystals containing LHM, we will get many new transmission properties. Presently, one-dimension photonic crystals containing LHM have become the focus in research.
The main works in this paper are shown as follows:
1. The conception, properties and applications of LHM and photonic crystals are reviewed.
2. From the Maxwell equation, we analyzed the physical mechanism of photonic band-gap formation.
3. From the electromagnetic theory of light, we analyzed the propagation characteristic of electromagnetic wave in the medium and derived the theory of one-dimensional optical transfer matrix.
4. Based on the structure of photonic crystals, we do some research about structure parameter effects on band-gap of one-dimension photonic crystals and one-dimension photonic crystals containing LHM by transfer matrix method.
5. We studied the energy bands of one-dimension photonic crystals in which we substitute the left-handed materials with dispersion materials.
Keywords: photonic crystals;negative refraction index;transfer matrix;energy band