Magnetophotonic crystals

When the constitutive materials of photonic crystals (PCs) are magnetic, or even only a defect introduced in PCs is magnetic, the resultant PCs exhibit very unique optical and magneto-optical properties. The strong photon confinement in the vicinity of magnetic defects results in large enhancement in linear and nonlinear magneto-optical responses of the media. Novel functions, such as band Faraday effect, magnetic super-prism effect and non-reciprocal or magnetically controllable photonic band structure, are predicted to occur theoretically. All the unique features of the media arise from the existence of magnetization in media, and hence they are called magnetophotonic crystals providing the spin-dependent nature in PCs.