Numerical Study Of Plasma Photonic Crystals

Plasmas with spacially periodical distribution are named as Plasma Photonic Crystal (PPC), which can be formed by plasmas with periodical density modulation, or composed by alternating plasmas and dielectric materials. Based on the plasma physics and the theory of photonic crystals, different methods are applied to study both one and two dimensional PPC in this paper. Results of the research are significant to both plasma stealth technology and microwave devices.Kronig-Penny model, scattering matrix method and finite difference time domain(FDTD) method are used to study the properties of one dimensional plasma photonic crystal. Results of different methods agree with each other. The propagation process of electromagnetic pulse is presented. The influences of different PPC parameters and defect structures on the band gap structure are discussed. The result shows that the band gaps become wider by enlarging the permittivity of the dielectric material, and band gap structure in low frequency depends mostly on the plasmas frequency, while particle collisions in the plasma only attenuate the electromagnetic waves.Band gap structures of both TE and TM modes in two dimensional PPC are calculated by FDTD method. The results indicate that cut-off frequency only existed in TM mode. Band gap structures varied with the parameters of two dimensional PPC, such as plasma frequency, the permittivity of the dielectric material and the filling rate of the cylinder. Transmission property of line defect was also studied which forecasts its potential application in filter devices.