Abstract

The physics of spontaneous emission in microcavities has been an area of active research for several years. One of the driving forces behind this activity is the promise of fabricating microcavity lasers having increased efficiency and speed in comparison to typical contemporary devices.¹ The basic effect of the cavity is to change the frequency-dependent mode density of the electromagnetic field, which influences the lasing properties via Einstein's A coefficient. We have developed a simple and intuitive method to calculate the mode density in microcavities having many different shapes and dimensionalities.²

© 1994 IEEE