Formation of collimated beams behind the woodpile photonic crystal

Abstract

We experimentally observe formation of narrow laser beams behind the woodpile photonic crystal, when the beam remains well collimated in free propagation behind the crystal. We show that the collimation depends on the input laser beam's focusing conditions, and we interpret theoretically the observed effect by calculating the spatial dispersion of propagation eigenmodes and by numerical simulation of paraxial propagation model.