Talk:Photonic crystal

Changing the title of "Fabrication Challenges" Section
I think this should be renamed to "Fabrication" rather than "Fabrication Challenges. While it may be difficult to fabricate photonic crystals for optical wavelength, it is indeed possible using Electron beam lithography, Focused ion beam or simply an advanced integrated circuit process. The challenges can be mentioned, but I think it is more insightful to talk about how photonic crystals are fabricated, rather than simply state that it is difficult to make them. What does everyone think?

vlado4 01:19, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

What Exactly is an "Exotic Wavelength"
A wavelength is just a distance. A distance can be unusually large or small, or infeasible with certain devices, but I fail to see how a wavelength can be "exotic". Sounds very much like typical hype associated with pseudoscience, and casts a bad light on the article.

76.67.72.75 (talk)

I would guess that the original author intended that phrasing to reference photonic-crystal fiber's applications to the telecommunication industry, where 'exotic wavelength' would mean 'outside the range of easily transmitted wavelengths.' I agree with your assessment of the word choice and edited the paragraph to remove it, among other things. Jeffwack111 (talk) 02:46, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

BBC Light storage article
Any scientists out there think there could be an application of this science [[Media:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4443854.stm]] to store light using directed propogation of electromagnetic waves, rendering them and -- instead of spontaneous emissions such as found in Photonic crystals -- allow for controlled emissions?

This application could solve the world's energy crisis, completely removing the need for fossil fuels or nuclear power in order to create light. Storing it in such a matter for later use?

Or am I making a mistaken assumption that light can be stored and delved out as needed in this manner?

I am imagining a global redirection of natural sunlight from the currently sunlit side of the earth absorbed in this manner and redirected to the other side of the planet to provide light as needed.


 * Anything is possible...Why not? But we could already do this using more conventional technology such as fibre optic cables.
 * --Ekimrenrob 17:59, 18 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Hello, wikipedia is not intended to be a general forum. Discussion should be related to the article. Perhaps you can find a general Photonic Crystals forum.
 * vlado4 00:51, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Which version of English?
Does anyone know which English governs the spelling here? At the moment it is written in two with "colour" and "fiber". Dtneilson 05:06, 20 November 2006 (UTC)


 * It appears that the wikipedia guideline for spelling is rather ambiguous. It states that either English can be used, but authors should be consistent on this page. As of now, there is one "color" and several "colour" on this page. Personally, I would not mind changing it to the American spelling, but I think this minor issue can be overlooked until the article is more developed.
 * vlado4 00:51, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Bunch of bull
Anyone with a microscope and tools and mirrors and vapor deposition equipment can create it. What do you see as an application of it?


 * Are you claiming that Photonic Crystals are easy to fabricate? Also, are you inquiring about applications of Photonic Crystals? Your "it" leaves much ambiguity.
 * vlado4 00:51, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

well i dont know, but in most applications it seems like a complex way to do simple things, like a polarizer on an LCD clock, the LED ones just give out light seen at all times!


 * An LED is a particularly bad example on your part, since photonic-crystal based LEDs are the basis of a successful company (http://www.luminus.com/) whose products are being used e.g. in new Samsung projection televisions. —Steven G. Johnson (talk) 05:18, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

photonic-crystal textbook available online
Hi all, we (at MIT) have recently published a new advanced-undergraduate level textbook on photonic crystals, and the publisher gave us permission to post a PDF of the book online. I suspect it would make a useful reference for readers (and editors) of this article (you are already linking my tutorial presentations), but I won't add it myself due to WP:COI. The book can be found at:


 * http://ab-initio.mit.edu/book/

I'll leave it to other editors to decide whether/how to use this book in the article.

—Steven G. Johnson (talk) 05:22, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Reference needed
Whoever added this: "Asher group at the University of Pittsburgh demonstrated the formation of three dimensional photonic crystals in the mid 1980s" to the history section, please add a reference, or I'll remove it.

I did a quick search for Asher at UNIV PITTSBURGH on Web of Science, and found a lot of papers from the 1980s on Raman spectroscopy, but none on photonic crystals.

Thank you. DMB (talk) 11:07, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I removed "...and the Asher group at the University of Pittsburgh demonstrated the formation of three dimensional photonic crystals in the mid 1980s " as no citations are forth-coming. DMB (talk) 09:58, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

History section
I haved removed the following paragraph from the end of this section: In 2003, a team at MIT (Evan J. Reed, et al.) published their discovery of "Unexpected and stunning new physical phenomena..." surrounding photonic crystals. They found that applying shock waves to a photonic crystal will cause frequency shifts in light traveling through the crystal. Secondly, shock waves can be used to trap light within the shock front as it travels through the crystal. Finally, the shock waves can be used to efficiently manipulate the bandwidth of light.[10] Further research has been performed on the frequency shifting phenomena at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.[11]

I checked on web of science, and the search Topic=((shock wave*) AND (photonic* crystal*)) gives only 21 results, and only 19 since 2003. I am of the opinion that 3 papers per year does not represent a noteworthy enough milestone in the history of photonic crystals to be included here. If you disagree, please argue otherwise.

I am sure that this (and other interesting photonic crystal phenomena) could merit a section, maybe title "Interesting photonic crystal phenonema". DMB (talk) 08:18, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

One more analysis technique
I wrote a paper for the IEEE Aerospace Conference in (I believe) 1998 called, "Analysis, Design and Testing of Integrated Structural Radomes Built Using Photonic Bandgap Structures" which presents an analysis technique similar to the plane wave expansion technique (I call it a "Bloch wave - MoM" technique). This technique is a 3D analog to the spectral domain method for 2D frequency selective surfaces (FSS). The MoM part vastly reduces the number of Block waves needed for convergence and makes PBG analysis as easy as FSS analysis. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.51.245.17 (talk) 03:02, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Photonic crystal. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20110812170716/http://www.aip.org:80/tip/INPHFA/vol-7/iss-6/p14.pdf to http://www.aip.org/tip/INPHFA/vol-7/iss-6/p14.pdf

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers. —cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 13:10, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

The first sentence was vague
At first we should know what a photonic crystal really is, without referring to X-ray diffraction, which an average reader has no idea of. The text, added by me, is absolutely essential. So my proposal is: "A photonic crystal is an optical nanostructure in which the refractive index changes periodically. This affects the propagation of light [...]" 85.193.252.19 (talk) 14:43, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Sure, that's great. When just improving the wording or clarity you don't really need to justify your edits on the talk page unless there is a dispute. With your other edit, though, I did think the previous wording was better and reverted it. (Though I do believe that most people who would understand the concept of a photonic crystal have studied enough physics that they'd be familiar with x-ray diffraction in natural crystals. But being more descriptive never hurts) Interferometrist (talk) 16:09, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * @Interferometrist Thank you for explaining the difference between "causes" and "gives rise to". I was mislead by the definition that I found here. Luckily, you enlightened me, which I appreciate a lot because English is my priority :-) 85.193.252.19 (talk) 19:02, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Well of course I wasn't saying that the difference (in connotation) was overwhelming or leads to a different understanding. If you're trying to discern shades of meaning I'd suggest rather than a dictionary you look in a thesaurus and concentrate on the closest synonyms you're most familiar with, or just do a search for the word or expression in English text to see how and when others do or don't use it. These might or might not help:
 * https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/cause
 * https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/give%20rise%20to Interferometrist (talk) 23:06, 24 November 2021 (UTC)