Self-guiding in photonic crystal made of dielectric veins

In this paper, we introduce a realistic vein-type photonic crystal slab design that exhibits self-guiding phenomenon. Both the plane wave expansion method (PWE) and 2D FDTD calculations are used in the optimisation process. We also show that this simple photonic crystal structure can be used as a collimating beam combiner. The obtained results show that employment of self-guiding effects can make photonic crystals advantageous with respect to metamaterials for the development of new optical devices.