Far-field emission pattern and photonic band structure in one-dimensional photonic crystals made from semiconductor microcavities

One-dimensional (1D) photonic crystals have been investigated by angle-resolved photoluminescence measurements. The crystals have been fabricated out of a semiconductor microcavity by lateral etching of photonic wires with a 1D lattice of small holes in the top mirror stack along the wire axis. The photonic band structure of such photonic crystals has been shown to demonstrate very small photonic gaps and can be regarded as a set of modes with the dispersion curves being replicas of the photonic wire modes periodically shifted with an integer number of the Brillouin zone periods. The replicas are well observed only for the even photonic wire modes which have the antinodes at the hole locations. The far-field emission pattern of the replicas demonstrates a much wider angle distribution than that of the maim modes having the energy minima at k = 0. [S0163-1829(99)02915-X].