Published in

Optica, Optics Express, 22(22), p. 27739, 2014

DOI: 10.1364/oe.22.027739

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Light-opals interaction modeling by direct numerical solution of Maxwell’s equations

This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

This work describes a 3-D Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) computational approach for the optical characterization of an opal photonic crystal. To fully validate the approach we compare the computed transmittance of a crystal model with the transmittance of an actual crystal sample, as measured over the 400 ÷ 750 nm wavelength range. The opal photonic crystal considered has a face-centered cubic (FCC) lattice structure of spherical particles made of polystyrene (a non-absorptive material with constant relative dielectric permittivity). Light-matter interaction is described by numerically solving Maxwell’s equations via a parallelized FDTD code. Periodic boundary conditions (PBCs) at the outer edges of the crystal are used to effectively enforce an infinite lateral extension of the sample. A method to study the propagating Bloch modes inside the crystal bulk is also proposed, which allows the reconstruction of the ω-k dispersion curve for k sweeping discretely the Brillouin zone of the crystal.