Volume 3 Issue 6, June 2007
The dynamic response of a periodic structure to any wave-like excitation — be it optical, acoustic or electronic — is governed by the coupling between the eigenstates of the structure. A complete description of these eigenstates involves not only real space, with which physicists and non-physicists alike are familiar, but the inverse of this space — so called reciprocal- or k-space. Although techniques exist to characterize the electronic eigenstates of atomic crystals in k-space, the same cannot be said for the optical eigenstates of photonic crystals. Rob Engelen and colleagues have now developed a near-field optical microscopy technique that enables them to track the temporal evolution of a pulse of light in k-space from one eigenstate to another as it passes through a complex photonic-crystal structure.
Editorial
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