Sparsity of radiating characteristic modes on infinite periodic structures

Characteristic modes on infinite periodic structures are studied using spectral dyadic Green's functions. This formulation demonstrates that, in contrast to the modal analysis of finite structures, the number of radiating characteristic modes is limited by unit cell size and incident wavevector (i.e., scan angle or phase shift per unit cell). The reflection tensor is decomposed into modal contributions from radiating modes, indicating that characteristic modes are a predictably sparse basis in which to study reflection phenomena.