Application of structural symmetries in the plane-wave-based transfer-matrix method for three-dimensional photonic crystal waveguides

The plane-wave-based transfer-matrix method (TMM) exhibits a peculiar advantage of being capable of solving eigenmodes involved in an infinite photonic crystal and electromagnetic (EM) wave propagation in finite photonic crystal slabs or even semi-infinite photonic crystal structures within the same theoretical framework. In addition, this theoretical approach can achieve much improved numerical convergency in solution of photonic band structures than the conventional plane-wave expansion method. In this paper we employ this TMM in combination with a supercell technique to handle two important kinds of three-dimensional (3D) photonic crystal waveguide structures. The first one is waveguides created in a 3D layer-by-layer photonic crystal that possesses a complete band gap, the other more popular one is waveguides built in a two-dimensional photonic crystal slab. These waveguides usually have mirror-reflection symmetries in one or two directions perpendicular to their axis. We have taken advantage of these structural symmetries to reduce the numerical burden of the TMM solution of the guided modes. The solution to the EM problems under these mirror-reflection symmetries in both the real space and the plane-wave space is discussed in a systematic way and in great detail. Both the periodic boundary condition and the absorbing boundary condition are employed to investigate structures with or without complete 3D optical confinement. The fact that the EM field components investigated in the TMM are collinear with the symmetric axes of the waveguide brings great convenience and clarity in exploring the eigenmode symmetry in both the real space and the plane-wave space. The classification of symmetry involved in the guided modes can help people to better understand the coupling of the photonic crystal waveguides with external channels such as dielectric slab or wire waveguides.