A six-port path-reconfigurable circulator based on Y-type plasma photonic crystal

Abstract A six-port path-reconfigurable circulator based on Y-type plasma photonic crystals (PPC) has been proposed. By calculating and analyzing the transfer matrix equation of the transverse magnetic (TM) waves, it can be concluded that the anisotropy generated by the magnetized plasma enables the TM waves to produce elliptical polarization. Therefore, the plasma columns are introduced in the design of a circulator. This circulator is constituted of six Y-type junctions. The direction of the magnetic field can be individually controlled by each junction. Therefore, the proposed path-reconfigurable circulator employs six Y-type junctions to realize the five paths reconfigurability when TM waves incident from the same port. The transmission characteristics of the circulator are simulated. The results show that the designed magnetized PPC can achieve the aim of five paths reconfigurable with the insertion losses of output port 2 (P2) to output port 6 (P6) are -0.889 dB, -1.18 dB, -1.26 dB, -1.29 dB, and -1.79 dB at operating frequency of 0.4882 (ωα/2πc).