Band-structure determination for finite 3-D photonic crystals

The partial band structure from a finite photonic crystal is determined using a model based on light diffraction and the transfer-matrix formalism. The predictions from such a model are compared to an experimental measurement of the bands in the LU direction of a face centered cubic colloidal crystal. Then, both the theoretical predictions and the experimental measurements are compared with the usual band-structure calculation based on a plane-wave expansion with perfectly periodic boundary conditions. As in measurements performed in the past, discrepancies between the predictions of this later model and the experimentally determined bands are observed. On the contrary, using the model presented based on light propagation through a finite crystal, where no periodicity is imposed in the direction perpendicular to any of the set of planes considered to determine a specific branch of the band structure, we found a very good agreement between the experimentally determined and the predicted bandwidths.