A simple route to a tunable electromagnetic gateway

Transformation optics is used to design a gateway that can block electromagnetic waves but allows the passage of other entities. Our conceptual device has the advantage that it can be realized with simple materials and structural parameters and can have a reasonably wide bandwidth. In particular, we show that our system can be implemented by using a magnetic photonic crystal structure that employs a square array of ferrite rods, and as the field response of ferrites can be tuned by external magnetic fields, we end up with an electromagnetic gateway that can be open or shut using external fields. The functionality is also robust against the positional disorder of the rods that make up the photonic crystal. 3 Author to whom any correspondence should be addressed. New Journal of Physics 11 (2009) 083012 1367-2630/09/083012+13$30.00 © IOP Publishing Ltd and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft