Microplasma Array Serving as Photonic Crystals and Plasmon Chains

Abstract

An array of microplasmas with sizes ranging from a millimeter to a micrometer, has potential for novel and promising electromagnetic-wave media, especially when the wave frequency is below the electron plasma frequency. Photonic crystals or band-gap materials composed of microplasmas have unique properties arising from their loss term, and they can become band-pass filters instead of the band-stop filters usually observed in photonic crystals of dielectrics. Such behavior is well understood using the dispersion relation in a three-dimensional space of frequency and complex wavenumber with real and imaginary parts. Another functional array is a simple one-dimensional (1D) array; it can conduct microwaves for a wide frequency range below the electron plasma frequency. The propagating modes are similar to the coupling of localized surface plasmon polaritons observed along a metallic nanoparticle chain in the photon range; however a 1D microplasma array features differ from those of a metallic sphere array, leading to a dynamic wide-band waveguide.