title: Disorder-immune confinement of light in photonic-crystal cavities.
abstract: We demonstrate by finite-difference time-domain simulations in 2D and 3D that optical cavities in realistic finite photonic crystals have lifetimes and modal volumes that are essentially insensitive to disorder (of various types, including surface disorder and randomized positions), even with unphysically large disorder. A lifetime Q = 10(8) is demonstrated in a 3D single-mode cavity with a half-wavelength mode diameter using only eight vertical periods of a disordered crystal.
authors.affiliation: Center for Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge 02139, USA. alexrod7@mit.edu
authors.forename: Alejandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Rodriguez
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ibanescu
authors.forename: J D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Joannopoulos
authors.forename: Steven G
authors.initials: SG
authors.lastname: Johnson