Defects and diffraction in photonic crystals

Photonic crystals are very promising because they provide the ability to create high performance microcavities with a high quality factor for a small modal volume. These cavity modes are obtained by creating defects in the periodicity and the defect design must be optimized to obtain the highest transmission. We investigate defect properties in the graphite structure by varying the size of some cylinders. Using the Transfer Matrix Method, we calculate the in-plane diffraction of defect rows and show how this diffraction affects the transmission of the cavity mode. (C) 1999 Academic Press.