Emission from an active photonic crystal

We investigated theoretically the emission from an active photonic crystal. Redistribution of photon density of states by a photonic lattice was found to greatly influence the thermal emission spectrum, resulting in substantial deviation from the Planck distribution. The calculation predicts that the photonic lattice intensity may exceed that of a blackbody source within certain spectral regions. However, the excess emission may be lost in practice because of nonradiative losses and photonic lattice inhomogeneities.