Abstract
In recent years, the photonics community has shown a keen interest in the optical properties of nanostructured materials, owing to their capability to manipulate light. Photonic crystals are materials with a periodic modulation of their refractive index on the wavelength scale. They can prohibit light propagation in certain frequency ranges and exhibit large spatial dispersions that yield anomalous refraction effects. Metamaterials, on the other hand, are assemblies of microscopic metallic or dielectric elements behaving on the macroscopic scale as a homogeneous medium with optical properties not found in nature.<br /><br />This thesis is concerned with a theoretical and computational study of these structures and intended to provide novel solutions for an advanced control over light. First, we focus on the confinement of light to structural defects in photonic crystals based on opals, which are stacks of dielectric spheres, and propose various designs of resonant cavities and single-mode waveguides. In a second part, we investigate the propagation of light beams in defectless planar photonic crystals. We demonstrate the ability of graded photonic crystals to curve the path of light and propose a practical way to couple light efficiently to external waveguides. Finally, we study the optical properties of all-dielectric rod-type metamaterials and show that their microscopic resonances induce a permittivity and permeability both dispersive in frequency and scalable to the optical frequencies. These works open many opportunities on the control of the emission and propagation of light and may find use in many areas such as telecommunications, Life Sciences and solar energy.