High-Q photonic crystal cavities in all-semiconductor photonic crystal heterostructures

Abstract

Photonic crystal cavities enable the realization of high Q-factor and low mode-volume resonators, with typical architectures consisting of a thin suspended periodically patterned layer to maximize confinement of light by strong index guiding. We investigate a heterostructure-based approach comprising a high refractive index core and lower refractive index cladding layers. While confinement typically decreases with decreasing index contrast between the core and cladding layers, we show that, counterintuitively, due to the confinement provided by the photonic band structure in the cladding layers, it becomes possible to achieve Q factors >104 with only a small refractive index contrast. This opens up opportunities for implementing high-Q factor cavities in conventional semiconductor heterostructures, with direct applications to the design of electrically pumped nanocavity lasers using conventional fabrication approaches.