The propagation of light in nonperiodic quasicrystals is studied by ultrashort pulse interferometry. Samples consist of multilayer dielectric structures of the Fibonacci type and are realized from porous silicon. We observe mode beating and strong pulse stretching in the light transport through these systems, and a strongly suppressed group velocity for frequencies close to a Fibonacci band gap. A theoretical description based on transfer matrix theory allows us to interpret the results in terms of Fibonacci band-edge resonances.

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We investigated the temperature dependence (10–180 K) of the photoluminescence (PL) emission spectrum of self-organized InAs/GaAs quantum dots grown under different conditions. The temperature dependence of the PL intensity is determined by two thermally activated processes: (i) quenching due to the escape of carriers from the quantum dots and (ii) carrier transfer between dots via wetting layer states. The existence of different dot families is confirmed by the deconvolution of the spectra in gaussian components with full width half maxima of 20–30 meV. The transfer of excitation is responsible for the sigmoidal temperature dependence of the peak energies of undeconvoluted PL bands.

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We experimentally observe a sizable and reversible spectral tuning of the resonances of a two-dimensional photonic crystal microcavity induced by the introduction of a subwavelength size glass tip. The comparison between experimental near-field data, collected with / 6 spatial resolution, and results of numerical calculations shows that the spectral shift induced by the tip is proportional to the local electric field intensity of the cavity mode. This observation proves that the electromagnetic local density of states in a microcavity can be directly measured by mapping the tip-induced spectral shift with a scanning near-field optical microscope.