Theory of electromagnetic wave propagation in a longitudinally periodic cylinder

Thinking of photonic crystals, we investigate the theory of electromagnetic wave propagation in a perfectly conducting semi-cylinder endowed with a periodic permittivity along its axis while its circular base is illuminated by an harmonic Bessel beam, symmetric around the cylinder axis. We prove that the Floquet-Bessel expansions of electromagnetic fields whose Floquet parts are solutions of a Mathieu equation. is a suitable tool to handle this kind of problems. Copyright EDP Sciences/Società Italiana di Fisica/Springer-Verlag 2008