Observation of Enhanced Beaming from Photonic Crystal Waveguides

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates experimentally how surface modes in photonic crystal waveguides can significantly enhance beaming, enabling diffractionless, long-range energy delivery with potential applications in optical and microwave technologies.

Contribution

The study provides the first experimental mapping of beaming effects in photonic crystal waveguides with surface mode enhancement, validated by numerical simulations.

Findings

Confirmed diffractionless beaming in photonic crystals

Achieved long-range energy transmission at microwave frequencies

Validated experimental results with numerical models

Abstract

We report on the experimental observation of the beaming effect in photonic crystals enhanced via surface modes. We experimentally map the spatial field distribution of energy emitted from a subwavelength photonic crystal waveguide into free-space, rendering with crisp clarity the diffractionless beaming of energy. Our experimental data agree well with our numerical studies of the beaming enhancement in photonic crystals with modulated surfaces. Without loss of generality, we study the beaming effect in a photonic crystal scaled to microwave frequencies and demonstrate the technological capacity to deliver long-range, wavelength-scaled beaming of energy.