title: Optical properties of photonic crystal heterostructure cavity lasers.
abstract: We design, fabricate, and test photonic crystal heterostructure cavity lasers in the InP material system. A heterostructure cavity is formed by interfacing two different photonic crystals such that a dispersion maximum of the inner lattice lies within the band gap of the surrounding lattice. Feedback to slow light modes of the central region results in a lower threshold and single mode operation. The use of a kagome lattice as the inner defect area increases the semiconductor volume as well as the modal overlap with the gain material. We use a simulation technique to verify experimentally observed single mode operation as well as to quantify the effects of the heterostructure cavity formation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA. giannopo@illinois.edu
authors.forename: Antonios V
authors.initials: AV
authors.lastname: Giannopoulos
authors.forename: Yu-Jia
authors.initials: YJ
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Christopher M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Long
authors.forename: Jian-Ming
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Jin
authors.forename: Kent D
authors.initials: KD
authors.lastname: Choquette