Summary: Near-field scanning optical microscopy as a simultaneous probe of fields
and band structure of photonic crystals: A computational study
Shanhui Fan,a)
Ian Appelbaum, and J. D. Joannopoulos
Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139
Received 11 January 1999; accepted for publication 29 June 1999
We demonstrate the feasibility of employing near-field scanning optical microscopy NSOM
imaging to simultaneously obtain both the eigenfield distribution and the band-structure information
of a photonic crystal. We introduce the NSOM measurement configuration required and simulate the
imaging process, with both the tip and the sample included, using three-dimensional
finite-difference time-domain calculations. Both the field-pattern and the frequency­wave-vector
relations of photonic crystal eigenmodes are revealed by analyzing simulated images. © 1999
American Institute of Physics. S0003-6951 99 02534-6
Photonic crystals are predicted to have the capability of
drastically affecting the dispersion relations, symmetries, and
spatial power distributions of electromagnetic modes within
their boundaries and thereby provide a new dimension in
controlling the flow of light.1,2
These predictions are being
actively tested by experiments. Most of the experiments per-

Source: Appelbaum, Ian - Department of Physics, University of Maryland at College Park
Fan, Shanhui - Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University

Collections: Engineering; Materials Science; Physics