Optical characterization of high quality two dimensional photonic crystal cavities

Summary form only given. Photonic crystal nanocavities have recently attracted much attention because such cavities are predicted to provide the desired combination of both small mode volume and high Q values. However, typical well-confined donor mode cavities have small mode volumes, but also suffer from low Q values limited by vertical scattering losses. To address the problem, Vuckovic et al. recently predicted by 3D-FDTD (finite difference time domain) calculations that single defect cavities with fractional edge dislocations can have well-localized modes with high Q values of as high as 30,000. In this presentation, we report the experimental demonstration that by using fractional edge dislocations in photonic crystal cavities, it is possible to construct microcavities with high Qs as well as small mode volumes.