Coupled Photonic Crystal Nanocavities as a Tool to Tailor and Control Photon Emission

In this review, we report on the design, fabrication, and characterization of photonic crystal arrays, made of two and three coupled nanocavities. The properties of the cavity modes depend directly on the shape of the nanocavities and on their geometrical arrangement. A non-negligible role is also played by the possible disorder because of the fabrication processes. The experimental results on the spatial distribution of the cavity modes and their physical characteristics, like polarization and parity, are described and compared with the numerical simulations. Moreover, an innovative approach to deterministically couple the single emitters to the cavity modes is described. The possibility to image the mode spatial distribution, in single and coupled nanocavities, combined with the control of the emitter spatial position allows for a deterministic approach for the study of cavity quantum electrodynamics phenomena and for the development of new photonic-based applications.
M.F. and A.P. acknowledge support by Sapienza Università di Roma under the “Ricerche Ateneo” Grants 2016 and 2017. F.B., M.F. and G.P. also acknowledge support and funding from the Italian Ministry for Education, University and Research within the Futuro in Ricerca (FIRB) program (project DeLIGHTeD, Prot. RBFR12RS1W). The work of F.B. was partially supported by Fondazione Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze within the project PERBACCO (no. 2016.1084). A.P and M.F. have also received funding from the LazioInnova project “SINFONIA”, (Prot. n. 85-2017-15200).
We acknowledge support by the CSIC Open Access Publication Initiative through its Unit of Information Resources for Research (URICI)