Structure-Induced Ultratransparency in Photonic Crystals

Abstract

This chapter presents the recent progress on structure-induced ultratransparency in both one-and two-dimensional photonic crystals (PhCs). Ultratransparent PhCs not only have the omnidirectional impedance matching with the background medium, but also have the ability of forming aberration-free virtual images. In certain frequency regimes, such ultratransparent PhCs are the most transparent solid materials on earth. The ultratransparency effect has many applications such as perfectly transparent lens, transformation optics (TO) devices, microwave transparent devices, solar cell packaging, etc. Here, we demonstrate that the ultratransparent PhCs with "shifted" elliptical equal frequency contour (EFC) not only provide a low-loss and feasible platform for transformation optics devices at optical frequencies, but also enable new degrees of freedoms for phase manipulation beyond the local medium framework. In addition, microwave transparent devices can be realized by using such ultratransparent PhCs.