Photonic band structure of highly deformable self-assembling systems

We calculate the photonic band structure at normal incidence of highly deformable, self-assembling systems—cholesteric elastomers subjected to external stress. Cholesteric elastomers display brilliantly colored reflections and lasing owing to gaps in their photonic band structure. This band structure has been shown to vary sensitively with strain in both theory and experiment. New gaps open up and all gaps shift in frequency. We predict a different “total” band gap for all polarizations in the vicinity of the previously observed de Vries band gap, which is only for one polarization.