Refraction-based photonic crystal diode

A system composed of air holes in a dielectric host to form two square photonic crystals, with the same orientation and lattice constant but different scatterer radii, making an interface along their body diagonals, is numerically demonstrated to facilitate unidirectional light transmission. Band structure computations are carried out via the plane wave expansion method, whereas finite-difference time-domain simulations are carried out to investigate the transient behavior. Unidirectional light transmission is achieved over two adjacent stop bands along the Gamma X direction, which are circumvented in the forward direction by scaling down the wave vector and rotating the surface normal. Contrast ratios as high as 0.9 are attained within the lower stop band. (C) 2012 Optical Society of America