Broadband super-collimation with low-symmetric photonic crystal

We investigate dispersive properties of two dimensional photonic crystal (PC) called star-shaped PC (STAR-PC) in order to succeed super-collimation over a broad bandwidth. Both time- and frequency-domain numerical methods are conducted. Due to introduced low-symmetry in the primitive cell, flat contours are observed at the fifth band for transverse magnetic mode. The proposed structure supports a super-collimation effect over a broad wavelength range between 1443 nm and 1701 nm with a bandwidth of Delta omega = 16.42%. The intrinsic characteristic of STAR-PC provides in-plane beam propagation with a limited diffraction length of 120a, where a is the lattice constant. By mean's of STAR-PC, one may realize super-collimation based single-mode optical devices with a low insertion loss, reduced dispersion and wide bandwidth. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.