Photonic quantum-well structures: Multiple channeled filtering phenomena

One can construct photonic quantum-well structures by stacking different photonic crystals in a way similar to semiconductor quantum wells, provided that the photonic band gaps of the constituent photonic crystals are properly aligned. If the photonic band of the photonic crystal in the well region is just located into the photonic band gap of the photonic crystal in the barrier region, quantized confined photonic states will appear owing to the photonic confinement effects. It is found that the number of the confined states can be tuned by adjusting the number of period of the well region, leading to the phenomena of multiple channeled filtering. A huge amplification of the field intensity is found in the well region for the confined photonic states. (C) 2000 American Institute of Physics. [S0003-6951(00)05349-3].