Optical amplification enhancement in photonic crystals

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that optical amplification in dye-doped photonic crystals is significantly enhanced along specific directions, due to variations in the density of states, offering insights for laser efficiency improvements.

Contribution

It provides experimental evidence and theoretical explanation of directional amplification enhancement in photonic crystals based on density of states variations.

Findings

Over twenty-fold amplification enhancement along Gamma-K directions

Directional dependence linked to density of states variations

Quantitative connection established between density of states and light amplification

Abstract

Improving and controlling the efficiency of a gain medium is one of the most challenging problems of laser research. By measuring the gain length in an opal based photonic crystal doped with laser dye, we demonstrate that optical amplification is more than twenty-fold enhanced along the Gamma-K symmetry directions of the face centered cubic photonic crystal. These results are theoretically explained by directional variations of the density of states, providing a quantitative connection between density of the states and light amplification.