Abstract

Influencing the spontaneous emission rate by modifying the surroundings of an emitter was already predicted by Purcell in 1946 [1]. The goal of this work it to investigate the quantum-optical interplay of photonic crystals (PCs) with localized emitters. The local density of states in the PC unit cell causes a position dependent modification of the spontaneous emission rate. The PCs are fabricated in Nb2O5 on SiO2 slabs using electron beam lithography and have a hexagonal symmetry. 40-nm diameter FluoSpheres® are infiltrated as localized emitters into the 2D PCs. Their statistical distribution is analysed with scanning electron microscopy (SEM) as depicted in Fig. 1. This configuration allows us to probe the unit cell of the PC at various positions and create histograms of the fluorescence lifetime distribution.

© 2007 IEEE