Bloch theorem with revised boundary conditions applied to glide and screw symmetric, quasi-one-dimensional structures

Bloch theorem is useful for analyzing wave propagation in periodic systems. It has been widely used to determine the energy bands of various translationally-periodic crystals and with the advent of nanoscale structures like nanotubes, it has been extended to account for additional symmetries using group theory. However, this extension is restricted to Hamiltonian systems with analytical potentials. For complex problems, as for engineering structures, the periodic unit cells are often discretized and the Bloch method is restricted to translational periodicity. The goal of this paper is to generalize the direct and transfer-matrix propagation Bloch method to structures with glide and screw symmetries by deriving appropriate boundary conditions. Dispersion relations for a set of reduced problems are compared to results from the classical method, when available. It is found that (i) the dispersion curves are easier to interpret, (ii) the computational cost and error are reduced, and (iii) revisited Bloch method is applicable to structures as the Boerdijk-Coxeter helix that do not possess purely translational symmetries for which the classical method is not applicable. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.