Optical Tamm states in dielectric photonic crystal heterostructure

Abstract

We investigate one-dimensional dielectric photonic crystal and optical Tamm modes formed by superposition of two band gaps and find that this kind of mode can be explained by the single negative materials tunnelling effect. A finite-size dielectric photonic band gap can mimic one kind of effective single negative material and this property sensitively depends on the frequency location in stop-band regions and surface termination and so on. The effective impedance match and effective phase match give the precise position of the optical Tamm mode. Complete transparency via tunnelling is achieved by two opaque media and demonstrates the validity of our approach. © 2008 Chinese Physical Society and IOP Publishing Ltd.