2025/04/08 by Zheng Gong, Gong, Zheng, Ruoxi Chen +5 · 1 citation
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Metamaterials and Metasurfaces Applications #Optics (physics.optics) #Photonic Crystals and Applications #Quantum many-body systems
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2504.05735
openalex publication_date 2025/04/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Maxwell-Garnett theory, dating back to James Clerk Maxwell-Garnett's foundational work in 1904, provides a simple yet powerful framework to describe the inhomogeneous structure as an effective homogeneous medium, which significantly reduces the overall complexity of analysis, calculation, and design. As such, the Maxwell-Garnett theory enables many practical applications in diverse realms, ranging from photonics, acoustics, mechanics, thermodynamics, to material science. It has long been thought that the Maxwell-Garnett theory of light in impedance-mismatched periodic structures is valid only within the long-wavelength limit, necessitating either the temporal or spatial period of light to be much larger than that of structures. Here, we break this long-held belief by revealing an anomalous Maxwell-Garnett theory for impedance-mismatched photonic time crystals beyond this long-wavelength limit. The key to this anomaly lies in the Fabry-Perot resonance. We discover that under the Fabry-Pérot resonance, the impedance-mismatched photonic time crystal could be essentially equivalent to a homogeneous temporal slab simultaneously at specific discrete wavelengths, despite the temporal period of these light being comparable to or even much smaller than that of photonic time crystals.