Abstract

Photonic crystals are characterized by a periodic dielectric constant at wavelength scale. Such a periodic structure has a specific density of photonic states, equivalent to the electronic band structure in a crystal, and fundamentally different from the density of states in vacuum. When fluorescent light sources are embedded in photonic crystals, according to Fermi's golden rule, the rate of spontaneous emission, proportional to the photonic local density of states (LDOS) is modified by this environment. Therefore photonic crystals are used to tailor light emission as well for quantum information purpose, as for laser conception. Most of these study use heavy technological means. The aim of this paper is to show that both emission diagram and spontaneous emission can be tailored by self assembled colloidal photonic crystals.

© 2009 IEEE