Ultrafast all-optical switching and optical properties of microcavities and photonic crystals

Abstract

PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit Twente, op gezag van de rector magnificus, prof. dr. H. Brinksma, volgens besluit van het College voor Promoties in het openbaar te verdedigen op vrijdag 1 oktober 2009 om 16.45 uur door Alex Hartsuiker geboren op 3 februari 1980 te Arnhem Dit proefschrift is goedgekeurd door: prof. dr. W. L. Vos Wilt gij naar verre hoogten, gebruik dan uw eigen benen! Laat u niet omhoog dragen, ga niet zitten op vreemde ruggen en koppen! -Friederich Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra -C Bibliography 147 A Center frequency versus Si filling fraction 157 B Photonic strength 159 Nederlandse samenvatting 161 Dankwoord 165 ix CHAPTER 1 with the dotted lines. The stopband has 100% reflectivity, while the cavity results in a trough at the resonance frequency ω 0 (solid line). fulfilled at a wavevector with a modulus k = π/d. At k = π/d a gap opens up in the dispersion relation with a width determined by the photonic strength S. This modification of the dispersion relation can be attributed to the Bragg stacks. In the middle of the gap a band of modes is present, indicated by the line [22]. This band of modes is the result of that is stored in the cavity red-shifts due to the switched cavity resonance. The empty cavity relaxes to its original resonance wavelength. (B) Schematic representation of an empty cavity that is switched. When the cavity is switched and relaxes to its original resonance wave-length, the cavity is loaded with photons. During the relaxation, the photons change color in absence of a pump pulse.

Optimal all-optical switching of a microcavity resonance in the telecom range using the electronic Kerr effect

“…We explain the transient reflectivity using the description given in Refs. [22][23][24]. In the absence of spectral filtering, the measured signal J, neglecting electronic amplification factors, is equal to the magnitude of the time-and space integrated Poynting vector S [22,23]:…”

“…The reflected signal from the cavity is spectrally filtered with a spectrometer (Acton) and detected with a nitrogen cooled InGaAs line array detector (Princeton Instruments). Therefore, the observed spectrum, without amplification and conversion factors, is a Fourier transform of E(t) [23,24]…”

Reflectivity of three-dimensional GaAs photonic band-gap crystals of finite thickness

“…Finite crystal size is also known to affect the propagation of light. In previous work, the stop band widths of weakly interacting photonic crystals (in absence of band gaps) was found to decrease with increasing the crystal thickness [50,51]. Remarkably, however, such finite-size effects for stop band widths has hardly been discussed in strongly interacting photonic crystals with photonic band gaps.…”

“…This simple Bragg condition leads to the formation of a stop gap for light incident in the k in direction [28]. It appears that for photonic crystals with a low photonic strength such as opals and colloidal crystals [50,51,64], the observed total relative stop band width ω/ω c -where ω c is the center frequency of the stop band-is well described by the following FIG. 7.…”

Non-Rayleigh distribution of reflected intensity from photonic crystals with disorder

“…In the experiments, we studied light propagation in synthetic opal photonic crystals, which are made of silica colloidal spheres (radius R = 349 nm) grown on a silicon wafer 41,42 (see SEM image in Fig. 1(b)).…”