Suppression of spontaneous emission in a 1D photonic bandgap structure: experimental demonstration

Abstract

Summary form only given. Recently, photonic bandgap structures (PBGS) and their optical properties have attracted great interest, both in terms of basic physics as well as from an applications aspect.The PBGS may be doped with optically active atoms or molecules removing the necessity of the atomic beam and the need to manually overlap the optical and atomic beams. Spontaneous emission from an atom or molecule in a PBGS may be manipulated both in spatial and temporal characteristics. This is accomplished by manipulating or altering the local environment (vacuum field) seen by the atom or molecule. PBGS accomplish this by reducing or enhancing (to varying degree) the vacuum field as seen by the atom in a spatial and frequency-dependant manner. We show a schematic of our experimental setup and the Er-doped fiber Bragg grating (FBG). The Er-doped FBG parameters such as peak reflectivity are given.