Controlled switching of surface waves in 1D photonic crystals by a thin nonlinear cap layer

In this paper, we investigate the electromagnetic surface waves localized at the interface of the homogeneous dielectric medium and a semi-infinite one-dimensional photonic crystal (1D PC), theoretically. The semi-infinite 1D PC is made of alternative layers of left-handed (LH) and right-handed (RH) materials in the presence of a thin nonlinear cap layer. We consider magnetic permeability and electric permittivity of LH layers being dispersive and non-dispersive. We used an analytical direct matching procedure within the Kronig-Penny model to analyze the dispersion behavior of surface waves with controllable localization. It is shown that the thin nonlinear cap layer acts as a tool to change the backward surface waves to forward ones and vice versa and it plays an important role on the localization of them. Also we show that when the LH layers are chosen dispersive, negative dispersion of surface waves are obtained in a wide range of radiation angle and frequency, and we propose an approach to calculate the applied electric field intensity that leads to switching of surface waves from backward to forward and creating a surface mode with maximum localization.