Two-component cavity based on a regular photonic crystal nanobeam.

The authors propose and numerically examine a two-component design for an optical nanocavity. Such a nanocavity consists, first, of a photonic crystal (PC) nanobeam, in which the PC unit cell is not changed. Second, the cavity contains a fragment of some supplementary material of the size of several or several tens of PC unit cells. When the two components are combined, a defect forms in which the resonant mode can be excited. The advantages of the proposed cavity model are reported, particularly the possibility of implementing electrically pumped light sources and amplifiers and the simplification of development of nanocavities with nonlinear properties. The fabrication tolerances of the proposed nanocavity were investigated. It has been found that existing structural layer alignment technologies can be used for fabricating the suggested cavity.