Regensburg 2010 – scientific programme

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HL: Fachverband Halbleiterphysik

HL 54: Photonic Crystals: Theory

HL 54.1: Talk

Thursday, March 25, 2010, 14:00–14:15, H13

Thermal emission from finite photonic crystals — •Kurt Busch¹, Christian Schuler¹, Christian Wolff¹, and Marian Florescu² — ¹Institut für Theoretische Festkörperphysik and DFG-Center for Functional Nanostructures (CFN), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, 76128 Karlsruhe, Germany — ²Department of Physics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, U.S.A.

We present a microscopic theory of thermal emission from truncated photonic crystals and show that the relevant physical parameters such as the directional spectral emissivity can be obtained from standard photonic bandstructure computations without any approximation. This allows us to identify the physical mechanisms how interfaces modify the potentially super-Planckian radiation flow inside infinite photonic crystals [1] such that thermal emission from truncated systems remains consistent with the fundamental limits set by Planck’s law [2]. As an application, we further demonstrate how a judicious choice of a surface termination facilitates considerable control over both the spectral and angular thermal emission properties [2,3].
[1] M. Florescu et al., Phys. Rev. B 75, 201101(R) (2007).
[2] C.J. Schuler et al., Appl. Phys. Lett., in press.
[3] C.J. Schuler et al., submitted.