Analysis of cutoff frequency in a one-dimensional superconductor-metamaterial photonic crystal

• Our results show that the appearance of the cutoff frequency, below which the incident electromagnetic waves cannot propagate in the structure. We demonstrate that the cutoff frequency shows an upward trend as the thickness of the superconductor layer as well as the thickness of the metamaterial increase.
• The cutoff frequency can be tuned by the operating temperature. Our structures are good candidates for many optical devices such as optical filters, switches, temperature controlled optical shutter, and among photoelectronic applications in gigahertz.

In this paper, using the two-fluid model and the characteristic matrix method, we investigate the transmission characteristics of the one-dimensional photonic crystal. Our structure composed of the layers of low-temperature superconductor material (NbN) and double-negative metamaterial. We target studying the effect of many parameters such as the thickness of the superconductor material, the thickness of the metamaterial layer, and the operating temperature. We show that the cut-off frequency can be tuned efficiently by the operating temperature as well as the thicknesses of the constituent materials.