Suppression of filamentation by photonic crystals

In this work we expand on the practical side of using periodic refractive index modulation – photonic crystals – to control the spatial dispersion curvature in a way that could suppress filamentation, by discussing some of the key issues arising in their fabrication. Fabrication of such photonic crystals poses some unique challenges due to the small feature size and large-scale requirement. Bessel beam writing is shown to be a valid method for the fabrication of such photonic crystals. Use of an annular beam to form the Bessel beam is shown to significantly reduce the errors in fabrication, allowing the formation of photonic crystals of sufficiently high quality for further experimental study.