High-frequency susceptibility of a superlattice with 2D inhomogeneities

We investigate the high-frequency susceptibility (Green function) of an initially sinusoidal 1D superlattice with 2D phase inhomogeneities that model the deformations of the interfaces between the superlattice layers. For waves propagating along the superlattice axis (the geometry of a photon or magnon crystal), we have found a peculiar behavior of the imaginary part of the Green function that consists in a significant difference between the peaks corresponding to the edges of the band gap in the wave spectrum. The peak corresponding to the lower-frequency band edge remains essentially unchanged as the root-mean-square fluctuation of the 2D inhomogeneities γ₂ increases, while the peak corresponding to the higher-frequency band edge broaden and decreases sharply in height until its complete disappearance with increasing γ₂. This behavior of the peaks corresponds to a band gap closure mechanism that differs from the traditional one characteristic of 1D and 3D inhomogeneities. These effects can be explained by a peculiarity of the energy conservation laws for the incident and scattered waves for 2D inhomogeneities in a 1D superlattice.