Tuning effects in optimisation of GaAs-based InGaAs/GaAs quantum-dot VCSELs

The comprehensive optical-electrical-thermal-recombination self-consistent simulation of an operation of quantum-dot (QD) VCSELs is used to optimise their structure for GaAs-based oxide-confined QD VCSELs predestinated for the second-generation 1.3-μm optical-fibre communication. It has been found that, contrary to a general belief of lasing thresholds of QD lasers inversely proportional to their density, for any design of QD VCSELs, there exists an optimal QD density ensuring its lowest lasing threshold. Besides, in intentionally strongly detuned QD VCSELs, to reach the desired 1.30-μm radiation, it is superfluous to improve uniformity of their QDs because their lasing thresholds are surprisingly distinctly lower for less uniform QDs. Then for these devices more optimal are somewhat non-uniform QDs and a necessary optical gain may be achieved with the aid of an increasing QD density.     

Structure optimisation of modern GaAs-based InGaAs/GaAs quantum-dot VCSELs for optical fibre communication

Room-temperature (RT) continuous-wave (CW) performance of modern 1300-nm oxide-confined In(Ga)As/GaAs quantum-dot (QD) vertical-cavity surface-emitting diode lasers (VCSELs) taking advantage of many QD sheets is investigated using our comprehensive self-consistent simulation model to suggest their optimal design. Obviously, quantum dots should be as uniform as possible and as dense as possible to ensure high enough optical gain. Besides, our simulation reveals that efficient and uniform current injection into VCSEL active regions necessary to enhance excitation of the desired fundamental LP₀₁ mode is accomplished in the VCSEL configuration with the broad-area bottom contact and the ring upper one as well as with the oxide aperture localized within the first period of the upper p-type DBR. The doping of the DBR mirrors is chosen as a compromise between their high enough electrical conductivity and low enough free-carrier absorption. The oxide aperture is additionally introducing the radial optical waveguiding. Moreover, our analysis has been concluded that VCSEL active regions should be composed of at least 9 QD sheets to acquire efficient RT CW operation. Furthermore, rather longer optical cavities are recommended in this case because localization of QD sheets should be adjusted to the anti-node positions of the optical cavity standing wave.     

Electrically injected quantum-dot photonic crystal microcavity light sources

The design, fabrication, and characterization of an electrically injected quantum-dot photonic crystal microcavity light source are described. The optical gain in the GaAs/AlGaAs-based device is provided by self-organized InGaAs quantum dots with ground-state room-temperature emission at 1.1 microm. The carriers are injected directly into the photonic crystal microcavity, which contains approximately 50 dots, avoiding surface state recombination in the photonic crystal pattern. The spectral characteristics of a single-defect photonic crystal microcavity show a single 2 nm broad microcavity resonance. The output power is of the order of a few tens of nanowatts.     

Positioning photonic crystal cavities to single InAs quantum dots

We have investigated the optical properties of planar photonic crystal cavities formed by removing a single hole from a two-dimensional square lattice of air holes etched through a thin GaAs slab. We have demonstrated cavity resonances with quality factors (Q’s) as high as 8500, using an internal light source provided by an ensemble of InAs quantum dots (QDs) grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). The high-Q modes are confined to a very small mode volume, V = 0.7(λ/n)³, making them attractive to study in the context of cavity quantum electrodynamics with single QDs, where a high is needed to observe the strong coupling between an electronic state of the dot and the optical cavity mode. To this end, we have developed an accurate and robust alignment technique that positions a photonic crystal cavity to a single QD with 25 nm resolution. We present the details of this new technology and demonstrate its effectiveness by strategically positioning a number of QDs within photonic crystal cavities at points where the electric field intensity is high.     

Terahertz two-dimensional high-Q photonic crystal waveguide cavities

Numerical simulations were used to design a variety of high-Q resonant cavities for integration into a terahertz 2D photonic crystal waveguide. After fabrication, the transmission characteristics of each integrated cavity were explored. These photonic waveguide-coupled cavities demonstrate resonances with linewidths approaching 10 GHz. The results compare favorably to previous observations of rectangular waveguide cavities. Good agreement between the experimental results and the numerical simulations was obtained.     

High-efficiency calculations for three-dimensional photonic crystal cavities

A numerical method was developed by combining a plane-wave-based transfer matrix method and a robust rational function interpolation algorithm. The optical properties of three-dimensional photonic crystal cavities were extracted in a short computation time with high numerical accuracy.     

Ultrahigh-quality photonic crystal cavity in GaAs

Membrane-based photonic crystal GaAs cavities with a double-heterostructure design were investigated. They show the highest quality factors for GaAs photonic crystal cavities to date, exhibiting quality factors higher than 10(5). The resonances of these cavities were fine-tuned in steps smaller than 2 nm by digital etching.     

High-Q photonic crystal surface-mode cavities on crystalline SOI structures

High-Q side-coupled surface-mode cavities in two-dimensional (2D) photonic crystals on crystalline silicon-on-insulator (SOI) structures are demonstrated. One of the surface-mode cavities has the measured system Q factor and intrinsic Q factor of 6200 and 13,400, respectively. The experimental results show that the value of system Q factor is ten times and the intrinsic Q factor six times higher than those of similar structures on amorphous SOI structures, respectively, due to the intrinsic material loss is much lower for crystalline silicon. The Q factors of cavities can be further improved by spin-on-glass overlayers, for increasing the structural symmetry. After the spin-on-glass process, the system Q factor and the intrinsic Q factor become nearly twice higher. Meanwhile, the drop wavelengths are largely red-shifted.     

Coupling of nitrogen-vacancy centers to photonic crystal cavities in monocrystalline diamond

The zero-phonon transition rate of a nitrogen-vacancy center is enhanced by a factor of ～70 by coupling to a photonic crystal resonator fabricated in monocrystalline diamond using standard semiconductor fabrication techniques. Photon correlation measurements on the spectrally filtered zero-phonon line show antibunching, a signature that the collected photoluminescence is emitted primarily by a single nitrogen-vacancy center. The linewidth of the coupled nitrogen-vacancy center and the spectral diffusion are characterized using high-resolution photoluminescence and photoluminescence excitation spectroscopy.     

基于光子晶体共振耦合的四波长波分复用/解复用器

谐振腔因其具有选频功能而在集成光学领域具有广泛的应用. 通过两个光子晶体环形腔、四个不同尺寸的光子晶体微腔及波导之间的耦合, 实现了1310 nm, 1550 nm, 1600 nm和1650 nm 四个波长的波分解复用．时域有限差分法模拟分析的结果表明, 仅仅通过调制输出波导边缘介质柱的半径, 即可使四个波长的输出效率均达到90%以上. 所设计的器件不但效率高, 而且尺寸小(约为12 μ m× 17 μ m), 在未来的光通信领域中具有潜在的应用价值.     

超晶格中GaAs/InGaAs界面与InGaAs/GaAs界面的特性差异

In_xGa_1-xAs缓冲层上生长In_yGa_1-yAs/GaAs超晶格（x＜y）．阱层处于压缩应变，垒层处于伸张应变，其厚度均小于Mathews-Blakeslee（M-B）平衡理论计算的临界厚度．透射电子显微镜及俄歇电子能谱、二级离子质谱测试发现，GaAs/In_yGa_1-yAs界面铟组分过渡区比In_yGa_1-yAs/GaAs界面铟组 关键词：     

High-Q microfluidic cavities in silicon-based two-dimensional photonic crystal structures

We demonstrate postprocessed microfluidic double-heterostructure cavities in silicon-based photonic crystal slab waveguides. The cavity structure is realized by selective fluid infiltration of air holes using a glass microtip, resulting in a local change of the average refractive index of the photonic crystal. The microcavities are probed by evanescent coupling from a silica nanowire. An intrinsic quality factor of 57,000 has been derived from our measurements, representing what we believe to be the largest value observed in microfluidic photonic crystal cavities to date.     

Microcavity plasmonics: strong coupling of photonic cavities and plasmons

The understanding of light‐matter interactions at the nanoscale lays the groundwork for many future technologies, applications and materials. The scope of this article is the investigation of coupled photonic‐plasmonic systems consisting of a combination of photonic microcavities and metallic nanostructures. In such systems, it is possible to observe an exceptionally strong coupling between electromagnetic light modes of a resonator and collective electron oscillations (plasmons) in the metal. Furthermore, the results have shown that coupled photonic‐plasmonic structures possess a considerably higher sensitivity to changes in their environment than conventional localized plasmon sensors due to a plasmon excitation phase shift that depends on the environment.     

Numerical modelling of optical trapping in hollow photonic crystal cavities

Photonic crystal (PhC) devices owing to their strong confinement of electromagnetic energy are considered to be excellent candidates for on chip optical trapping of dielectric or biological particles in the nanometer range. In this work, we study and present hollow PhC cavities and characterize them for their trapping stiffness, trapping stability and variation of resonance wavelength due to the presence of various sized single particles in the cavity.     

Contra-directional coupling between two-dimensional photonic crystal waveguides

The contra-directional coupling between two photonic crystal (PC) waveguides is studied, using the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. A design of contra-directional coupler is presented and its transmission properties are investigated. The device can be used as an add/drop filter. It is also shown that the coupled mode theory is suitable to study the photonic crystal waveguide coupler.     

Dielectric matrices with air cavities as a waveguide photonic crystal

Frequency dependences of the transmission coefficient of a microwave photonic crystal that represents a structure containing alternating layers of ceramic material (Al₂O₃) with a relatively large number of cavities and foam plastic are studied in the presence and absence of distortions of the periodicity of a photonic structure. The frequency dependences of the transmission coefficient can be analyzed using a model of effective medium that makes it possible to consider the interaction of electromagnetic wave and photonic crystal using a transfer matrix of a 1D photonic crystal. The band character of the frequency dependence of the transmission coefficient of the photonic crystal related to the periodicity of the photonic crystal in the transverse plane for the waveguide with a standard cross section is not manifested in a certain range of material permittivities.     

One-dimensional coupled cavities photonic crystal filters with tapered Bragg mirrors

The performance of one-dimensional (1D) coupled cavities photonic crystal (PC) filters has been analyzed by finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulation. It is shown that the addition of tapered Bragg mirrors at each side of the cavities, to create near-Gaussian field profiles for the cavity modes, results in the prediction of near flat-top passband filters with high out-of-band rejection ratio and near unity transmission. The tapered structures suppress the vertical radiation loss to allow optimization of the number of mirror periods for the best filter response whilst guaranteeing high transmission. A critical coupling condition (k = 2L_out/L_in = 1) for flat-top responses in doubly coupled cavities filters is proposed in the tapered structures. An optimized filter for 100 GHz optical communication system are demonstrated with 1 dB bandwidth of 0.17 nm, roll-off of 0.6 dB/GHz, out-of-band signal rejection of 33 dB and transmission of 95%. Further improvement of roll-off and out-of-band rejection is demonstrated in a triply coupled cavities filter.     

Engineering silicon-based photonic crystal cavities for NV-center quantum information processing

Silicon slab photonic crystal micro cavities designed for of-resonant coupling to nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers were simulated and fabricated. FDTD-simulations show the partial density of states spectrally near the NV-center electric dipole transition can be tuned to reduce decoherence of an excited NV-center despite this transition being above the silicon electronic band gap. The partial density of states at the NV-center transition can be made to dip below half of the free-space partial density of states without significantly affecting the cavity mode quality factor. These promising results sustain the merits of using silicon as a base photonic crystal material for quantum information processing even when integrated emitters radiate above the electronic band gap of silicon.     

All optical 2-bit analog to digital converter using photonic crystal based cavities

A novel design for realizing all optical analog to digital converter will be proposed in this paper. The proposed structure consists of two main parts; a nonlinear 3-channel demultiplexer, followed by an optical coder. The nonlinear demultiplexer will be used to quantize the input analog signal according to its optical intensity and the coder will convert the quantized levels into 2-bit binary codes. The nonlinear demultiplexer will be realized using three nonlinear resonant cavities. At appropriate values of input signal optical intensity one of the cavities can drop the optical beam to its corresponding output port. The proposed structure is capable of supporting maximum sampling rate up to 52 GS/s and total footprint of the structure is about 924 µm².