title: Designer disordered materials with large, complete photonic band gaps.
abstract: We present designs of 2D, isotropic, disordered, photonic materials of arbitrary size with complete band gaps blocking all directions and polarizations. The designs with the largest band gaps are obtained by a constrained optimization method that starts from a hyperuniform disordered point pattern, an array of points whose number variance within a spherical sampling window grows more slowly than the volume. We argue that hyperuniformity, combined with uniform local topology and short-range geometric order, can explain how complete photonic band gaps are possible without long-range translational order. We note the ramifications for electronic and phononic band gaps in disordered materials.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
authors.forename: Marian
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Florescu
authors.forename: Salvatore
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Torquato
authors.forename: Paul J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Steinhardt