Guiding optical flows by photonic crystal slabs made of dielectric cylinders

We investigate the electromagnetic propagation in two-dimensional photonic crystals, formed by parallel dielectric cylinders embedded in a uniform medium. The frequency band structure is computed using the standard plane-wave expansion method, while the propagation and scattering of the electromagnetic waves are calculated by the multiple scattering theory. It is shown that within partial band gaps, the waves tend to bend away from the forbidden directions. Such a property may render novel applications in manipulating optical flows. In addition, the relevance with the imaging by flat photonic crystal slabs will also be discussed.