Enhanced complete photonic band gap for three-dimensional plasma photonic crystals in pyrochlore arrangement

In this paper, the properties of complete photonic band gaps (PBGs) for three-dimensional (3D) plasma photonic crystals (PPCs) composed of the isotropic positive-index materials and non-magnetized plasma with pyrochlore lattices are theoretically investigated by a modified plane wave expansion method. The eigenvalue equations for calculating the band structure for such 3D PPCs in the first irreducible Brillouin zone (spheres with the isotropic positive-index materials inserted in the non-magnetized plasma background) are theoretically deduced. Numerical simulations show that the complete PBG and one flatbands region can be achieved. It also shows that the larger PBG can be obtained in such PPCs topology structure compared to the conventional lattices as the non-magnetized plasma density is low, such as diamond, face-centered-cubic, body-centered-cubic and simple-cubic lattices. The influences of the relative dielectric constant of spheres, the filling factor of dielectric spheres, the plasma frequency and the plasma collision frequency on the properties of complete PBG are investigated in detail, and some corresponding physical explanations are also given. The numerical results also show that the PBG can be manipulated by the parameters as mentioned above except for the plasma collision frequency. Introducing the non-magnetized plasma into 3D dielectric–air photonic crystals (PCs) can obtain the larger complete PBGs as such 3D PCs in pyrochlore arrangement.