Observation of enhanced beaming from photonic crystal waveguides

Abstract

We report on the experimental observation of the beaming effect in photonic crystals using experimentally mapped spatial field distributions of energy emitted from a subwavelength photonic crystal waveguide into free-space, rendering with crisp clarity the diffractionless beaming of energy. Our experimental data agree well with our numerical studies of the beaming enhancement in photonic crystals with modulated surfaces. Without loss of generality, we study the beaming effect in a photonic crystal scaled to microwave frequencies and demonstrate the technological capacity to deliver long-range wavelength-scaled beaming of energy. Show more