Demonstration of enhanced Er luminescence in nanobeam photonic crystal nanocavities based on Er,O-codoped GaAs

Abstract We employ a nanobeam photonic crystal (PhC) cavity with a central defect to improve its quality ( Q-) factor, in order to enhance Er luminescence. Detailed numerical simulations are conducted to investigate the optimization process of the nanobeam PhC and a maximum Q -factor of 7.8 × 10 6 with a mode volume of 0.58 ( λ /n) 3 is obtained by optimizing the cavity design. The nanobeam PhC cavity with GaAs:Er,O as an active component is fabricated based on the simulation results. One of the cavity modes from the nanobeam PhC is perfectly coupled to Er luminescence at 1537 nm, and all of the cavity modes that appeared in the experimental results were consistent with the numerical simulations. A 4.6-fold enhancement of Er luminescence attributed to the coupling to the cavity mode is demonstrated with a Q -factor of ∼5500.