Broadband omnidirectional diversion of light in hybrid plasmonic-photonic heterocrystals

Broadband, omnidirectional, and polarization-independent diversion has been achieved of more than 90% of the light flow intensity off its incidence direction using hybrid metal-dielectric plasmonic-photonic heterocrystals. These architectures were prepared by depositing metal film on the interface between two photonic crystals of different parameters. The magnitude of light losses was extracted from angle-resolved measurements of transmission and reflectance spectra. Comparing these data for different stages of constructing the complex architecture, the diffraction in colloidal crystals, the excitation and radiative decay of short-living surface plasmon polaritons in a corrugated metal film and the eigenmode mismatch at the interface between two different photonic crystals were identified as corroborating physical mechanisms behind the light diversion.