Properties Of Photonic Crystal Cavities Research Articles

Modal Properties of Photonic Crystal Cavities and Applications to Lasers.

Photonic crystal cavities enable strong light–matter interactions, with numerous applications, such as ultra-small and energy-efficient semiconductor lasers, enhanced nonlinearities and single-photon sources. This paper reviews the properties of the modes of photonic crystal cavities, with a special focus on line-defect cavities. In particular, it is shown how the fundamental resonant mode in line-defect cavities gradually turns from Fabry–Perot-like to distributed-feedback-like with increasing cavity size. This peculiar behavior is directly traced back to the properties of the guided Bloch modes. Photonic crystal cavities based on Fano interference are also covered. This type of cavity is realized through coupling of a line-defect waveguide with an adjacent nanocavity, with applications to Fano lasers and optical switches. Finally, emerging cavities for extreme dielectric confinement are covered. These cavities promise extremely strong light–matter interactions by realizing deep sub-wavelength mode size while keeping a high quality factor.

Nonlinear properties of photonic crystal cavity with embedded electromagnetic-induced-transparency-like meta-atoms

We experimentally and theoretically investigate the nonlinear electromagnetic properties of a microstrip photonic crystal (PC) cavity with embedded electromagnetic-induced-transparency (EIT)-like meta-atoms. A bistable response, with threshold of low to −6.1 dBm and the transmission contrast of up to 4.0 dB, is conceptually demonstrated with a varactor as the nonlinear medium inclusion. Such low-threshold and high-contrast transmission action comes from the composite PC-EIT mechanism, which possesses sharper features and stronger localization of the electromagnetic field than either PC cavity or EIT-like meta-atoms. This mechanism will be useful for all-optical signal processing with advanced materials.

A Transmission Line Resonator Model for Fast Extraction of Electromagnetic Properties of Cavities in Two-Dimensional Photonic Crystals

In this paper, photonic cavities made of point defects in 2-D photonic crystals are modeled by finite-size transmission lines terminated at both ends by appropriate scalar impedances. The proposed model forms a simple transmission line resonator and is demonstrated to be quite beneficial in fast extraction of resonant frequency, quality factor, and mode profile of such photonic cavities. In this manner, an approximate yet quite accurate approach is introduced to characterize the electromagnetic properties of photonic crystal cavities. This method is successfully applied to different structures for both major polarizations and is shown to be as accurate as rigorous numerical methods, viz. the finite-element method.