Electromagnetic study of the quality factor of pillar microcavities in the small diameter limit

Philippe Lalanne (1) , Jean-Paul Hugonin (1) , Jean-Michel Gérard (2)

1 Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique / Naphel
2 NPSC - Nanophysique et Semiconducteurs

A thorough electromagnetic study of pillar microcavities reveals a surprising behavior for their Q factors in the strong confinement limit. Q displays a fast oscillatory variation as a function of the pillar diameter, and reaches values well in excess of the quality factor of the reference planar cavity. This behavior is explained by the hybrid character of the cavity mode in the small diameter limit, which results mainly from the electromagnetic coupling of the HE11 (i.e., fundamental) and EH11 guided modes of the cavity spacer through the associated Bloch modes in the Bragg mirrors.

Domains: Optics [physics.optics]

Philippe Lalanne, Jean-Paul Hugonin, Jean-Michel Gérard. Electromagnetic study of the quality factor of pillar microcavities in the small diameter limit. Applied Physics Letters, 2004, 84 (23), pp.4726-4728. ⟨10.1063/1.1759375⟩. ⟨hal-00872200⟩