Propagation property of electromagnetic waves in fractal Cantor photonic crystals

Two novel structures of fractal Cantor multilayer with defects are presented. The Optical transmission matrix method is used to calculate the transmittance and the reflectance. Compared with the general Cantor multilayer, these novel structures have wider stopbands and show super narrow bands in the middle of the wider stopbands, which can be used as super narrow bandpass filters. The pass band can be less than 0.6 nm near the infrared wavelength of 1530 nm when there is an embedded defect in the cantor multilayer. The optical transmission in the central wavelength is higher than 99 %, which means a very low insert loss. If there are three layers, three super narrow peaks can be found in the middle of the stopband. The central wavelengths are respectively 1232.4 nm, 1372.8 nm and 1538.3 nm. It is much better than other kinds of narrow band filters and it may be used in the optical communications. © 2007 Tianjin University of Technology.