Inhibition and enhancement of the spontaneous emission of quantum dots in structured microresonators

Spontaneous emission of quantum dot systems in laterally structured microca vities that exhibit photon confinement in all three directions has been stu died by time-resolved photoluminescence spectroscopy. For on-resonance cond itions, we find that the dot emission rate is increased substantially over that of the unstructured planar cavity. For off-resonance conditions, we ar e able to suppress the emission rate by an order of magnitude by using cavi ties with metal coatings, which we attribute to the suppression of leaky op tical modes in these structures.