Magnetophotonic crystals

Abstract

In much the same way that semiconductor crystals affect the propagation of electrons, photonic crystals (periodic composites of macroscopic dielectric media of different refractive index) affect the propagation of light, providing a new mechanism to control and manipulate the flow of light. When the constitutive material of PCs is magnetic, or even only a defect introduced into the periodic structure is magnetic, the resultant PCs (let us simply refer to as magnetophotonic crystals (MPCs) hereafter) exhibit unique optical and magneto-optical responses: The strong photon confinement associated with the magnetic defect can be exploited to enhance and optimize magneto-optical (MO) effects and optical non-linearity of existing materials.