Spontaneous emission enhancement at a photonic wire miniband edge

Emilie Viasnoff-Schwoob (1) , Claude Weisbuch (1) , Henri Benisty (2) , Ségolène Olivier (3) , Romuald Houdré (4) , Christopher J. M. Smith (5)

1 LPMC - Laboratoire de physique de la matière condensée
2 Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique / Naphel
3 CEA-LETI - Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives - Laboratoire d'Electronique et de Technologie de l'Information
4 IMO - Institut de Micro et Optoélectronique
5 Intense Photonics

In a multimode photonic-crystal waveguide, we observe strong enhancement of the photoluminescence of embedded quantum dots at the edges of the so-called mini-stopband that were opened by Bragg diffraction between two guided modes. Taking into account light collection, we relate this observation to the singular photon density of states that is characteristic of a one-dimensional photon system. Furthermore, we quantify by how much the radiation losses smooth the divergence. For the first time to our knowledge, a clear account of the control of spontaneous emission in a one-dimensional system is thus demonstrated.

Domains: Optics [physics.optics]

Emilie Viasnoff-Schwoob, Claude Weisbuch, Henri Benisty, Ségolène Olivier, Romuald Houdré, et al.. Spontaneous emission enhancement at a photonic wire miniband edge. Optics Letters, 2005, 30 (16), pp.2113-2115. ⟨10.1364/OL.30.002113⟩. ⟨hal-00877006⟩