Band structure computations for dispersive photonic crystals

Abstract: Photonic crystals are periodic structures that offers the possibility to control the propagation of light. The revised plane wave method has been implemented in order to compute band structures for photonic crystals. The main advantage of the revised plane wave method is that it can handle lossless dispersive materials. This can not be done with a conventional plane wave method. The computational challenge is comparable to the conventional plane wave method. Band structures have been calculated for a square lattice of cylinders with different parameters. Both dispersive and non-dispersive materials have been studied as well as the influence of a surface roughness. A small surface roughness does not affect the band structure, whereas larger inhomogeneities affect the higher bands by lowering their frequencies.