Abstract

Ultrasmall and high-Q cavities have been considered as one of the most important targets since the study of photonic crystals emerged two decades ago. This is because photonic bandgaps are believed to enable ultra-tight light confinement within a wavelength-scale volume which is generally fundamentally difficult using conventional methods. Such tight confinement (if it were possible) would lead to extreme enhancement of light-matter interaction. Though it is not easy to practically realize this expectation, recent progress in design and fabrication leads to steep rise of the performance for λ-scale optical cavities implemented in photonic crystals. In this talk, we will present our recent progress in terms of photonic-crystal cavities, and discuss its impact on various optical phenomena and applications.

© 2007 IEEE