2007/06/04 by Dario Gerace, D. Gerace, L. C. Andreani +1 · 69 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Condensed matter physics #Exciton #Hamiltonian (control theory) #Photon #Photonic crystal #Physics #Plasmonic and Surface Plasmon Research #Polariton #Quantum mechanics #Quasiparticle #Strong Light-Matter Interactions #Thermal Radiation and Cooling Technologies #cond-mat.soft #physics.optics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.75.235325
published in Physical Review B 75(23) (American Physical Society) · 14 pages, 9 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. B
arxiv created 2007/06/04 · openalex publication_date 2007/06/26 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
A theoretical description of radiation-matter coupling for semiconductor-based photonic crystal slabs is presented, in which quantum wells are embedded within the waveguide core layer. A full quantum theory is developed by quantizing both the electromagnetic field with a spatial modulation of the refractive index and the exciton center-of-mass field in a periodic piecewise constant potential. The second-quantized Hamiltonian of the interacting system is diagonalized with a generalized Hopfield method, thus yielding the complex dispersion of mixed exciton-photon modes including losses. The occurrence of both weak- and strong-coupling regimes is studied, and it is concluded that the new eigenstates of the system are described by quasiparticles called photonic crystal polaritons, which can occur in two situations as follows: (i) below the light line, when a resonance between exciton and nonradiative photon levels occurs (guided polaritons) and (ii) above the light line, provided that the exciton-photon coupling is larger than the intrinsic radiative damping of the resonant photonic mode (radiative polaritons). For a square lattice of air holes, it is found that the energy minimum of the lower polariton branch can occur around normal incidence. The latter result has potential implications for the realization of polariton parametric interactions in photonic crystal slabs.