Design and demonstration of high-Q photonic heterostructure nanocavities suitable for integration

We have investigated the localized design of heterostructure photonic crystal nanocavities in order to make them more suitable for integration. While retaining theoretical quality factors of more than ten million, the total length of the heterostructure nanocavity can be reduced to similar to 5 mu m and the shifted air holes comprising the heterostructure can be restricted to the two rows nearest the nanocavity on each side. Though the area for the heterostructure nanocavity investigated thus far was larger than 10 x 10 mu m(2) in the photonic crystal slab, heterostructure nanocavities of this new design have sizes of approximately 3 x 5 mu m(2), thus allowing dense integration. (C) 2009 Optical Society of America