Noniridescent coloration by the spongy keratin in parrot feather barbs has fascinated scientists. Nonetheless, its ultimate origin remains as yet unanswered, and a quantitative structural and optical description is still lacking. Here we report on structural and optical characterizations and numerical simulations of the blue feather barbs of the scarlet macaw. We found that the sponge in the fe...

Optoelectronic devices have long benefited from structuring in multiple dimensions on microscopic length scales. However, preserving crystal epitaxy, a general necessity for good optoelectronic properties, while imparting a complex three-dimensional structure remains a significant challenge. Three-dimensional (3D) photonic crystals are one class of materials where epitaxy of 3D structures would...

Magnetic photonic crystals are spatially periodic dielectric composites with at least one of the constitutive components being a magnetically polarized material. We show that the electrodynamic properties of magnetic photonic crystals with proper configuration correspond to those of hypothetical media with huge linear magnetoelectric effect. In particular, such composites can display strong asy...

A laser cavity formed from a single defect in a two-dimensional photonic crystal is demonstrated. The optical microcavity consists of a half wavelength-thick waveguide for vertical confinement and a two-dimensional photonic crystal mirror for lateral localization. A defect in the photonic crystal is introduced to trap photons inside a volume of 2.5 cubic half-wavelengths, approximately 0.03 cub...

Photonic crystals - optical devices able to respond to changes in the refractive index of a small volume of space - are an emerging class of label-free chemical- and bio-sensors. This review focuses on one class of photonic crystal, in which light is confined to a patterned planar material layer of sub-wavelength thickness. These devices are small (on the order of tens to hundreds of microns sq...

In a ring laser gyroscope, due to the rotation and the Sagnac effect, a phase difference between the two counter-propagating beams is generated. In this device, the higher phase difference between these two beams causes the better the interference pattern detection, and thus the sensitivity is increased. In this paper, the effect of inserting a dielectric-graphene photonic crystal inside a ring...

Photonic crystal design procedure for negative refraction has so far been based on trial and error. In this paper, for the first time, a novel and systematic design procedure based on physical and mathematical properties of photonic crystals is proposed to design crystal equi-frequency contours (EFCs) to produce negative refraction. The EFC design is performed by the help of rectangular stair-c...

Herein we present a fast, reliable method for building nanoparticle-based 1D photonic crystals in which a periodic modulation of the refractive index is built by alternating different types of nanoparticles and by controlling the level of porosity of each layer. The versatility of the method is further confirmed by building up optically doped photonic crystals in which the opening of transmissi...

We describe a novel approach to implementing wide-field-of-view narrow-band spectral filters, using an array of resonant nanocavities consisting of periodic defects in a two-dimensional three-material photonic-crystal nanostructure. We analyze the transmissivity of this type of filter for a range of wavelengths and in-plane incidence angles as a function of the defect's refractive index, the nu...