Influence of the size-dependent permittivity of metal inclusions on the optical characteristics of a one-dimensional photonic crystal with a nanocomposite defect Sergey Moiseev 1,2 • Vladimir Ostatochnikov 1 Received: 23 December 2014 / Accepted: 22 May 2015 Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015 Abstract The spectral characteristics of a one-dimensional photonic crystal structure with a defect nanocomposite layer that consists of metallic nanoparticles distributed in a transparent matrix are theoretically studied. The defect mode shape inside the photonic band gap is found to depend substantially on the nanoparticle size and concentration in the defect layer. Keywords Photonic crystal  Defect modes  Plasmonic nanocomposite  Metal nanoparticles  Surface plasmon resonance  Size effect 1 Introduction One-dimensional photonic crystal structures formed by a periodic arrangement of layers of different materials have attracted a great deal of attention. Owing to the periodic modulation of their refractive index, the photon spectrum of such structures has a bandgap, with an almost total reflection of incident light. The functionality of photonic crystal structures can be extended through control of their spectral characteristics by varying their geometric and physical parameters. In particular, the photon spectrum can be significantly modified by disturbing periodicity or by using materials with controllable properties (Aly and Elsayed 2012; Wu and Wang 2010). Potentially attractive photonic crystal materials are metal-dielectric nanocomposites, which have high optical dispersion in the plasmon resonance region (Oraevskii and Protsenko 2001; Liznev et al. 2010; Moiseev 2011). The use of metal-dielectric nanocomposites as the & Sergey Moiseev serg-moiseev@yandex.ru 1 Ulyanovsk State University, 42, Leo Tolstoy Str., Ulyanovsk 432017, Russia 2 Ulyanovsk Branch, Kotel’nikov Institute of Radio-Engineering and Electronics, Russian Academy of Sciences, 48/2, Goncharov Str., Ulyanovsk 432011, Russia 123 Opt Quant Electron DOI 10.1007/s11082-015-0199-x