Since their spectacular experimental realisation in the early 80's [1], quasicrystals [2] have been the subject of very active research, whose domains extend far beyond the scope of solid state physics. In optics, for instance, photonic quasicrystals have attracted strong interest [3] for their specific behaviour, induced by the particular spectral properties, in light transport [4][5][6], plasmonic [7] and laser action [8]. Very recently, one of the most salient spectral feature of quasicrystals, namely the gap labelling [9], has been observed for a polariton gas confined in a one dimensional quasi-periodic cavity [10]. This experimental result confirms a theory which is now very complete in dimension one [11,12]. In dimension greater than one, the theory is very far from being complete. Furthermore, some intriguing phenomena, like the existence of self-similar eigenmodes can occur [13]. All this makes two dimensional experimental realisations and numerical simulations pertinent and attractive. Here, we report on measurements and energy-scaling analysis of the gap labelling and the spatial intensity distribution of the eigenstates for a microwave Penrose-tiled quasicrystal. Far from being restricted to the microwave system under consideration, our results apply to a more general class of systems.Quasicrystals are alloys that are ordered but lack translational symmetry. In dimension two, they can be modelled with a collection of polygons (tiles) that cover the whole plane, so that each pattern (a sub-collection of tiles) appears, up to translation, with a given density but the tiling is not periodic. A typical example is given by the Penrose tiling [14]. Here, we implement a microwave realisation of a Penrose-tiled lattice using a set of coupled dielectric resonators [see Fig. 1 (a)]. The microwave setup used has shown its versatility by successfully addressing various physical situations ranging from Anderson localisation [15] to topological phase transition in graphene [16], and provided the first experimental realisation of the Dirac oscillator [17].We establish a two-dimensional tight-binding regime [18], where the electromagnetic field is mostly confined within the resonators. For an isolated resonator, only a single mode is important in a broad spectral range around the bare frequency E b 6.65 GHz. This mode spreads out evanescently, so that the coupling
FIG. 1:Microwave Penrose-tiled quasicrystal. (a) Diamond-vertex Penrose-tiled quasicrystal, where the tiling is superposed to guide the eye (thin diamonds in green). The sites of the lattice are occupied by dielectric resonators (ceramic cylinders of 5 mm height and 8 mm diameter) with a high index of refraction (n = 6). The lattice is sandwiched between two aluminium plates (the upper one is not shown). The microwaves are excited by a movable loop antenna. (b) Experimentally obtained DOS as a function of frequency, the white and gray zones indicate the main frequency bands, Ei, and the gaps, ∆Ei, respectively. The bare frequency E b is indicated by the wh...