Optical properties of symmetry breaking of the self-similar order in triadic Cantor photonic crystals

In general, the photonic crystal (PC) is a periodical optical structure, but there are some studies considering aperiodic structures. If we insert a defect layer into a one-dimensional periodic PC to break its translational symmetry order (TSO), some peaks, called defect modes, appear in the transmittance spectrum. The defect layer thickness governs the frequencies of these defect modes but almost does not affect the other part of the spectrum. The discovery of quasi-crystals tells us that not only the TSO but also other orders can produce Bragg diffraction. It is well known that triadic Cantor set (TCS) PCs, which lack TSO but have a self-similar symmetry order (SSO), still exhibit narrow transmission peaks. In this work, we try to break the SSO in TCS PCs and find the resulting optical phenomena, where single-negative materials and dielectrics are chosen as the constituents of PCs. The study method is the transfer matrix method, and the calculation results show that the background intensity of the transmittance spectrum rather than the frequency of peaks obviously periodically changes with the break of SSO. It follows that the SSO does have physical meaning, and not only the transmission peaks but also the background should be treated as a significant optical property. (c) 2023 Optica Publishing Group