Far-field emission pattern and photonic band structure in one-dimensional photonic crystals made from semiconductor microcavities

One-dimensional (1D) photonic crystals have been investigated by angle-reso lved photoluminescence measurements. The crystals have been fabricated out of a semiconductor microcavity by lateral etching of photonic wires with a 1D lattice of small holes in the top mirror stack along the wire axis. The photonic band structure of such photonic crystals has been shown to demonst rate very small photonic gaps and can be regarded as a set of modes with th e dispersion curves being replicas of the photonic wire modes periodically shifted with an integer number of the Brillouin zone periods. The replicas are well observed only for the even photonic wire modes which have the anti nodes at the hole locations. The far-field emission pattern of the replicas demonstrates a much wider angle distribution than that of the maim modes h aving the energy minima at k = 0. [S0163-1829(99)02915-X].