Development and validation of computational tools for the characterization and analysis of non-linear plasma photonic crystals

Abstract

Plasma photonic crystals have the potential to significantly expand the capabilities of current microwave filtering and switching technologies by providing high speed (microsecond) control of energy band-gap/pass characteristics in the GHz through low THz range. While photonic crystals consisting of dielectric, semiconductor, and metallic matrices have seen thousands of articles published over the last several decades, plasma-based photonic crystals remain a relatively unexplored field. Numerical modeling efforts so far have largely used the standard methods of analysis for photonic crystals (the Plane Wave Expansion Method, Finite Difference Time Domain, and ANSYS finite element electromagnetic code HFSS), none of which capture nonlinear plasma-radiation interactions. This thesis describes a set of tools implemented in the Computational Plasma Dynamics Lab's WARPXM finite element multi-physics code to simulate, characterize, and analyze non-linear fluid effects of plasma photonic crystals. The model is validated against theory, linear numerical models, and experimental results. Additionally, novel cases are explored.