Spontaneous emission factor versus cavity volume in low dimensional photonic micro-cavities

Abstract

Micro-ring and micro-disk lasers an formed at the same time by transferring the epitaxial layers of 1.55 mu m wavelength InGaAs/ZnGaAsP quantum wells on a glass substrate. The spontaneous emission factor beta in such micro-rings of 5 mu m diameter and 0.2 x 0.5 mu m(2) cross-section is 0.16, which is four times that in micro-disk lasers of the same diameter. The result confirms for the first time that the micro-ring being a lower dimensional photonic system has a larger beta. Study of beta versus the cavity size indicates that the observed spontaneous emission factor is approximately the reciprocal of the normalized cavity volume, when normalization is done to the cubic of the wavelength in the medium. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.