The properties of three-dimensional plasma photonic crystals with Kerr nonlinear dielectric constituents

In this paper, the properties of the photonic band gaps (PBGs) of three-dimensional (3D) nonlinear plasma photonic crystals (NPPCs) are theoretically investigated by a modified plane wave expansion (PWE) method, whose equations for calculations also are deduced. The configuration of NPPCs is the Kerr nonlinear dielectric spheres (Kerr effect is considered) inserted into the plasma background with simple-cubic (SC) lattices whose dielectric constant is a function of the external light intensity. One distribution of Kerr nonlinear dielectric is considered, which can be expressed as a function of space coordinates. The influences of the external light intensity and filling factor on the PBGs also are discussed. The calculated results show that the locations, bandwidths and number of PBGs can be tailored by the external light intensity and filling factor. Compared with the conventional 3D dielectric PCs and plasma photonic crystals (PPCs) with SC lattices, the more PBGs or larger PBG can be obtained in the 3D NPPCs. Those results provide a new way to design some novel reconfigurable devices based on the PPCs.