Photonic Crystals: Molding the Flow of Light

by John D. Joannopoulos, Robert D. Meade, Steven G. Johnson

Photonic Crystals is the first book to address one of the newest and most exciting developments in physics--the discovery of photonic band-gap materials and their use in controlling the propagation of light. Recent discoveries show that many of the properties of an electron in a semiconductor crystal can apply to a particle of light in a photonic crystal. This has vast implications for physicists, materials scientists, and electrical engineers and suggests such possible developments as an entirely optical computer. Combining cutting-edge research with the basic theoretical concepts behind photonic crystals, the authors present to undergraduates and researchers a concise, readable, and comprehensive text on these novel materials and their applications.


The first chapters develop the theoretical tools of photonic crystals in a broad, intuitive fashion, starting from nothing more than Maxwell's equations and Fourier analysis, and include analogies to traditional solid-state physics and quantum theory. There follows an investigation of the unique phenomena that take place within photonic crystals, at defect sites, and at surfaces and interfaces. The authors offer a new treatment of the traditional multilayer film (a one-dimensional photonic crystal), which allows for the extension to higher dimensions and more complex geometries. After exploring the capabilities of photonic crystals to guide and localize light, the authors demonstrate how these notions can be put to work.

Genres: Science, Physics

184 pages, Hardcover

First published July 3, 1995

Reviews

[David Ortiz · Rating 4 out of 5]

From a graduate standpoint, is a very good book to grasp the basics of photonic crystals. Having read the second edition from start to finish, which you can find for free at the Joannopoulos group website, it stays at the absolute necessary deep, also formally -there isn't an excess of formulas here-, to understand what's going on. Very qualitative. It refers back to the most known references of electromagnetism, electrodynamics, quantum mechanics, solid state and maybe electronics. I wish this book would explore more possibilities of this kind of not-so-new materials, giving context of real devices being useful in new applications, but i suppose is beyond the scope of it.

[Andrej Novák · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easy to follow, covers all important areas you can stumble upon in introductory course to photonic, meta and left-handed materials.

I used this book mainly as a reference for creating MATLAB scripts to reproduce the presented results.