Unidirectional transmission characteristics of printed magnetic photonic crystals

Artificially engineered periodic structures, including photonic crystals and meta-materials, have generated strong interest in the scientific community due to their extraordinary and promising electromagnetic/optical features. Recently, periodic stacks of misaligned anisotropic layers have been shown to realize degenerate band edge (DBE) structures (A. Figotin , et al., Sep. 2005). When magnetic layers are included, magnetic photonic crystals (MPCs) are realized (A. Figotin, et al., Feb. 2001) that provide for even greater design flexibility. While the common denominator of these DBE and MPC structures is to slow energy transfer along a desired direction, the latter is even capable of generating the so called ldquofrozen modesrdquo in a nonreciprocal manner (A. Figotin, et al., Feb. 2001).