Excitations in photonic crystals infiltrated with polarizable media

Light propagation in a photonic crystal with incomplete band gap, infiltrated with polarizable molecules is considered. We demonstrate that the interplay between the spatial dispersion caused by Bragg diffraction and polaritonic frequency dispersion gives rise to alternative propagating excitations, or photonic-crystal-polaritons (PCP), with intragap frequencies. We derive the PCP dispersion relation and show that it is governed by two parameters, namely, the strength of light-matter interaction and detuning between the Bragg frequency and that of the infiltrated molecules. We also study defect-induced states when the photonic band gap is divided into two subgaps by the PCP branches and find that each defect creates two intragap localized states inside each subgap.