High-Q microwave resonators with a photonic crystal structure

The localisation of electromagnetic energy at a defect in a photonic crystal is similar to a well known effect employed to construct high-Q microwave resonators: In a whispering gallery (WHG-) mode resonator the high Q-factor is achieved by localisation of the electromagnetic field energy by total reflection inside a disk made of dielectric material. The topic of this work is to demonstrate, that WHG-like modes can exist in an air defect in a photonic crystal that extends over several lattice periods; and that a high-Q microwave resonator can be made, utilizing these resonant modes. In numerical simulations, the transmission properties of a photonic crystal structure with hexagonal lattice symmetry have been investigated with a transfer-matrix-method. The eigenmodes of a defect structure in a photonic crystal have been calculated with a quasi-3d finite element integration technique. Experimental results confirm the simulated transmission properties and show the existence of modes inside the band gap, when a defect is introduced in the crystal. Resonator measurements show that a microwave resonator can be operated with those defect modes. It was found out that the main losses of the resonator were caused by bad microwave properties of the used dielectric material and by metal losses on the top and bottom resonator walls. Furthermore, it turned out that the detection of the photonic crystal defect mode was difficult because of a lack of simulation possibilities and high housing mode density in the resonator. (orig.)