Photonic band gaps in materials with triply periodic surfaces and related tubular structures

TL;DR

This paper investigates the photonic band gaps in triply periodic structures with minimal surfaces, revealing how symmetry and topology influence gap characteristics and identifying structures with significant photonic band gaps.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of photonic band gaps in triply periodic minimal surface-based structures, highlighting the impact of symmetry and topology.

Findings

C(I2-Y**) structure exhibits a 20% photonic band gap at 11.9 dielectric contrast.

Midgap frequency of C(I2-Y**) is 1.5 times higher than D and G structures.

Symmetry and topology significantly affect the existence and size of photonic band gaps.

Abstract

We calculate the photonic band gap of triply periodic bicontinuous cubic structures and of tubular structures constructed from the skeletal graphs of triply periodic minimal surfaces. The effect of the symmetry and topology of the periodic dielectric structures on the existence and the characteristics of the gaps is discussed. We find that the C(I2-Y**) structure with Ia3d symmetry, a symmetry which is often seen in experimentally realized bicontinuous structures, has a photonic band gap with interesting characteristics. For a dielectric contrast of 11.9 the largest gap is approximately 20% for a volume fraction of the high dielectric material of 25%. The midgap frequency is a factor of 1.5 higher than the one for the (tubular) D and G structures.