Optical properties of metallic photonic crystal structures

This work presents a comprehensive study of the linear optical properties of metallo-dielectric photonic crystals. These artificially structured materials generally belong to the new material class of so-called polaritonic photonic crystals. They provide simultaneous electronic and photonic resonances in the same energy range. In this work, we investigate one-dimensional periodic gold nanowire arrays deposited on top of different substrate materials as an ideally suited model system. The influence of both dielectric and metallic substrates is studied. In particular, it is shown that the optical response of these metallo-dielectric nanostructures is generally modified due to the appearance of various electromagnetic coupling phenomena. Polariton formation as well as plasmon hybridization are reported.