Stable planar mesoscopic photonic crystal cavities.

Mesoscopic self-collimation (MSC) in mesoscopic photonic crystals with high reflectivity is exploited to realize a novel high Q-factor cavity by means of mesoscopic PhC planar mirrors. These mirrors efficiently confine a mode inside a planar Fabry-Perot-like cavity, that results from a beam focusing effect that stabilizes the cavity even for small beam sizes, resembling the focusing behavior of curved mirrors. Moreover, they show an improved reflectivity with respect to their standard distributed Bragg reflector counterparts that allows higher compactness. A Q-factor higher than 10⁴ has been achieved for an optimized 5-period-long mirror cavity. The optimization of the Q-factor and the performances in terms of energy storage, field enhancement, and confinement are detailed.