2D photonic crystal complete band gap search using a cyclic cellular automaton refination

•2D photonic crystal complete band gap search using a cyclic cellular automaton refination.•Method based on a cyclic cellular automaton (CCA) that simulates a crystallization-like process.•Evolutionary method called differential evolution (DE) used to perform an ordered search of full photonic band gaps.•A block-iterative frequency-domain method was used to compute the FPBGs on a PC, when present.•Finding of a PC structure with a 19% bandgap-to-midgap ratio without requiring previous information of suboptimal configurations. We present a refination method based on a cyclic cellular automaton (CCA) that simulates a crystallization-like process, aided with a heuristic evolutionary method called differential evolution (DE) used to perform an ordered search of full photonic band gaps (FPBGs) in a 2D photonic crystal (PC). The solution is proposed as a combinatorial optimization of the elements in a binary array. These elements represent the existence or absence of a dielectric material surrounded by air, thus representing a general geometry whose search space is defined by the number of elements in such array. A block-iterative frequency-domain method was used to compute the FPBGs on a PC, when present. DE has proved to be useful in combinatorial problems and we also present an implementation feature that takes advantage of the periodic nature of PCs to enhance the convergence of this algorithm. Finally, we used this methodology to find a PC structure with a 19% bandgap-to-midgap ratio without requiring previous information of suboptimal configurations and we made a statistical study of how it is affected by disorder in the borders of the structure compared with a previous work that uses a genetic algorithm.