Isotropic photonic band gap and anisotropic structures in transmission spectra of two-dimensional 5-fold and 8-fold symmetric quasiperiodic photonic crystals

We measured and calculated transmission spectra of two-dimensional quasiperiodic photonic crystals (PCs) based on a 5-fold (Penrose) or 8-fold (octagonal) symmetric quasiperiodic pattern. The photonic crystal consisted of dielectric cylindrical rods in air placed normal to the basal plane on vertices of tiles composing the quasiperiodic pattern. An isotropic photonic band gap (PBG) appeared in the TM mode, where electric fields were parallel to the rods, even when the real part of a dielectric constant of the rod was as small as 2.4. An isotropic PBG-like dip was seen in tiny Penrose and octagonal PCs with only 6 and 9 rods, respectively. These results indicate that local multiple light scattering within the tiny PC plays an important role in the PBG formation. Besides the isotropic PBG, we found dips depending on the incident angle of the light. This is the first report of anisotropic structures clearly observed in transmission spectra of quasiperiodic PCs. Based on rod-number and rod-arrangement dependence, it is thought that the shapes and positions of the anisotropic dips are determined by global multiple light scattering covering the whole system. In contrast to the isotropic PBG due to local light scattering, we could not find any PBGs due to global light scattering even though we studied transmission spectra of a huge Penrose PC with 466 rods.