Effective light dynamics in perturbed photonic crystals (Q461420)

The authors are concerned with the initial value problem for Maxwell's equations in \(\mathbb{R}^{3}\) in the so-called 6-vector notation for a bi-anisotropic, inhomogeneous material. The main focus of the paper is, however, mainly on the block diagonal, i.e. anisotropic, inhomogeneous case. The underlying Hilbert space is in this case denoted by \(\mathcal{H}_{\left(\epsilon,\mu\right)}\). The specific topic of the paper is to consider the approximate behavior of the Maxwell system as \(\lambda\) tends to zero, where \(\lambda\) is a parameter controlling a family of perturbed materials, where \(\epsilon,\mu,\) is replaced by \(\epsilon_{\lambda}:eqq\tau_{\epsilon}\left(\lambda\,\cdot\,\right)^{-2}\epsilon\), \(\mu_{\lambda}:eqq\tau_{\mu}\left(\lambda\,\cdot\,\right)^{-2}\mu\), with \(\lambda\in]0,1[\) and \(\tau_{\epsilon},\tau_{\mu}\) strictly positive, real-valued \(L^{\infty}\)-functions, \(\tau_{\epsilon}\left(0\right)=\tau_{\mu}\left(0\right)=1\). Moreover, \(\epsilon,\mu\) are assumed to be periodic, w.l.o.g. with respect to the unit cube (photonic crystal case). The goal of the paper is to derive an effective one-parameter semi-group, i.e. a family \(\left(e^{-\mathrm{i}tM_{\mathrm{eff}}}\right)_{t\in[0,\infty[}\) , capable to feature as a limit as \(\lambda\) tends to zero to the full electrodynamics described by the family of one-parameter semi-groups \(\left(e^{-\mathrm{i}tM_{\left(\epsilon_{\lambda},\mu_{\lambda}\right)}}\right)_{t\in[0,\infty[}\), \(\lambda\in]0,1[\,\), where \(M_{\left(\epsilon_{\lambda},\mu_{\lambda}\right)}\) denotes the (selfadjoint) Maxwell operator, under the assumption that the initial data are only supported in a narrow range of spatial frequencies. The approach is oriented at corresponding considerations for the Schrödinger equation, results, however, in considerably more complex investigations due to the large null space of the Maxwell operator and the symmetry of the spectrum around zero. In particular, that the effective dynamics supports real states forces one to consider a multiband situation ab initio.