Spontaneous transition of one-dimensional plasma photonic crystal's orientation in a dielectric barrier discharge

A novel one-dimensional plasma photonic crystal whose crystal orientation can change spontaneously is demonstrated using a dielectric barrier discharge with two liquid electrodes. The orientation of the plasma photonic crystal will vary from transverse to longitudinal or vary from longitudinal to transverse and then revert to longitudinal by self-adjustment, while the experimental conditions are kept fixed. The dispersion relation of these plasma photonic crystals are calculated, and the changes of the photonic band diagrams during the orientation transition are studied.

Tunable triangular and honeycomb plasma structures in dielectric barrier discharge with mesh-liquid electrodes

We demonstrate a method to generate tunable triangular and honeycomb plasma structures via dielectric barrier discharge with uniquely designed mesh-liquid electrodes.A rapid reconfiguration between the triangular lattice and honeycomb lattice has been realized.Novel structures comprised of triangular plasma elements have been observed and a robust angular reorientation of the triangular plasma elements withθ=π/3 is suggested.An active control on the geometrical shape,size and angular orientation of the plasma elements has been achieved.Moreover,the formation mechanism of different plasma structures is studied by spatial-temporal resolved measurements using a high-speed camera.The photonic band diagrams of the plasma structures are calculated by use of finite element method and two large omnidirectional band gaps have been obtained for honeycomb lattices,demonstrating that such plasma structures can be potentially used as plasma photonic crystals to manipulate the propagation of microwaves.The results may offer new strategies for engineering the band gaps and provide enlightenments on designing new types of 2D and possibly 3D metamaterials in other fields.