Photonic integration in k-space: Enhancing the performance of photonic crystal dye lasers

We demonstrate how two optical functionalities can be implemented in a single photonic crystal structure by carefully engineering dispersion in several different bands at several different wavelengths. We use the concept for optically pumped dye doped hybrid polymer band edge lasers and show how a rectangular photonic crystal lattice imprinted into the surface can provide both feedback for in-plane band edge lasing and couple pump light into the device plane, thus increasing the emitted intensity and lowering the lasing threshold by more than an order of magnitude.