Contents 1. Introduction
The performance of many optoelectronic devices is governed by the spontaneous emission characteristics. Therefore, the ability to engineer the spontaneous emission properties offers the possibility of improved device performance. Purcell already predicted in 1946 that a modification of the spontaneous emission properties is achieved in a resonator [1]. This modification is due to a change of the local radiative density of states (LRDOS) at the position of the emitter. Drexhage performed first experiments demonstrating the dependence of the spontaneous emission lifetime on the position of emitters in a planar one-dimensional microcavity [2]. More recently experiments were performed investigating spontaneous emission lifetime changes in cavities with very small modal volumes such as pillar microcavities [3] and photonic crystal defect cavities [4], [5]. While these cavity structures offer large modifications of the spontaneous emission lifetimes, the emission intensity is very small due to the small cavity volume. A promising approach for a large volume modification of the spontaneous emission properties is the use of homogeneous photonic crystal structures. Photonic crystals modify the LRDOS allowing for both enhancement and inhibition of the spontaneous emission depending on the position of the emitter [6]. Experiments have been performed demonstrating the averaged effect of the modified LRDOS in photonic crystals on an ensemble of emitters placed at random positions [7], [8]. The goal of our work is to investigate the quantum-optical interplay of photonic crystals with single localized emitters. For this purpose we infiltrate emitters into 2D photonic crystals as depicted schematically in Fig. 1 and measure the spontaneous emission intensity and lifetime of the localized emitters using spatially resolved spectroscopy and time correlated single photon counting. This research will allow for a statistical analysis of the distribution of the LRDOS in the photonic crystal. Schematic of single localized emitters in a 2D photonic crystal structure.
