Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 19, 2026

Using Microwave and Macroscopic Samples of Dielectric Solids to Study the Photonic Properties of Disordered Photonic Bandgap Materials
Published on: September 26, 2014
Imaging ripples on phononic crystals reveals acoustic band structure and Bloch harmonics
Dieter M Profunser1, Oliver B Wright, Osamu Matsuda
1Department of Applied Physics, Graduate School of Engineering, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 060-8628, Japan.
Abstract:
Broadband surface phonon wave packets on a phononic crystal made up of a microstructured line pattern are tracked in two dimensions and in real time with an ultrafast optical technique. The eigenmode distribution and the 2D acoustic band structure are obtained from spatiotemporal Fourier transforms of the data up to 1 GHz. We find stop bands at the zone boundaries for both leaky-longitudinal and Rayleigh waves, and show how the structure of individual acoustic eigenmodes in k space depends on Bloch harmonics and on mode coupling.
Related Concept Videos
Standing Waves in a Cavity
Standing Waves
Sound Waves: Interference
X-ray Crystallography
Diffraction
Diffraction is the change in the direction of travel experienced by an electromagnetic wave when it encounters a physical barrier whose dimensions are comparable to those of the wavelength of the light. X-rays are electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths about as long as the distance between neighboring...
Interference and Diffraction
The de Broglie Wavelength

