Chiral properties in a two-dimensional chiral polaritonic photonic crystal

We theoretically investigated a format of two-dimensional dielectric-chiral photonic crystal structure that is composed of a dispersive chiral medium embedded in a dielectric background. The photonic band structure shows distinctive dispersion relationship for circularly polarized electromagnetic waves, leading to a number of intriguing wave properties, namely chirality dependent "node switching," polarization sensitive transmission and handedness dependent mode localization. All of these effects are attributed to the strong interaction between the local resonant modes around the dispersive chiral rods and the Bloch modes of the bulk waves. The chirality dependent properties can find tremendous applications in polarization based optoelectronics devices and rapid separation of chiral compounds in pharmaceutical industry. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3485827]