Observation of fast spontaneous emission decay in GaInAsP photonic crystal point defect nanocavity at room temperature

Abstract

The spontaneous emission decay in a photonic crystal slab nanocavity with a GaInAsP quantum well active region was measured at room temperature. Even far below lasing threshold, the decay was much faster than that for the as-grown wafer. A consideration including the enhanced spontaneous emission rate by the Purcell effect, intraband relaxation of carriers, nonradiative surface recombination, spatial hole burning, and carrier diffusion enabled us to explain different decay lifetime between on-and off-resonant conditions and between different size cavities. As a result, Ͼ16-fold shorter spontaneous emission lifetime was estimated, which strongly suggests the existence of a large Purcell effect.

Ultrafast photonic crystal lasers

“…However, we have found that spatial effects such as carrier transport from the pump spot to the gain region, or spatial hole burning effects [25], are important in understanding lasing efficiency and time response. For that reason, we have developed a finite-difference time domain model that includes carrier dynamics.…”

Ultrafast photonic crystal nanocavity laser

“…Besides the dramatically enhanced small-and large-signal modulation speeds, the QED-enhanced lasers can also significantly improve power consumption [13][14][15][16][17]23 and associated thermal problems. The large β reduces the threshold power of the laser 23 .…”

“…Cavities introduced into the photonic crystal can have extremely high Q/V mode ratios, and therefore can enable large Purcell factors. So far, such nanocavities have been used for cavity quantum electrodynamic (QED) experiments 4-12 such as SE rate enhancement 4,5,9-11 and suppression 4 , and also for single-photon sources 4,12 and lower-threshold lasers [13][14][15][16][17] . Here, we demonstrate extremely fast photonic crystal nanocavity lasers with response times below the 2 ps detection limit of our measurement apparatus.…”

Nanophotonic technologies for single-photon devices

“…Many studies were published in the last decade on the opti− mization of PhC nanocavities [42,43], on the possibility of measuring the Purcell effect by a PhC based nanocavity [44][45][46][47] and quite recently on their capability to act as effi− cient single photon sources [48]. An L3 defect cavity is formed by keeping three holes un−etched along the GK direction of a triangular PhC and parallel to a cleaved edge of the GaAs sample.…”