We present a comparative micro-photoluminescence study of the emission intensity of self-assembled germanium islands coupled to the resonator mode of two-dimensional silicon photonic crystal defect nanocavities. The emission intensity is investigated
for cavity modes of L3 and Hexapole cavities with different cavity quality factors. For each of these cavities many nominally identical samples are probed to obtain reliable statistics. As the quality factor increases we observe a clear decrease in the average mode emission intensity recorded under comparable optical pumping conditions. This clear experimentally observed trend is compared with simulations based on a dissipative master equation approach that describes a cavity weakly coupled to an ensemble of emitters. We obtain evidence that reabsorption of photons emitted into the cavity mode is responsible for the observed trend. In combination with the observation of cavity linewidth broadening in power dependent measurements, we conclude that free carrier absorption is the limiting effect for the cavity mediated light enhancement under conditions of strong pumping.
We present a temperature dependent photoluminescence study of silicon optical nanocavities formed by introducing point defects into two-dimensional photonic crystals. In addition to the prominent TO phonon assisted transition from crystalline silicon
at ~1.10 eV we observe a broad defect band luminescence from ~1.05-1.09 eV. Spatially resolved spectroscopy demonstrates that this defect band is present only in the region where air-holes have been etched during the fabrication process. Detectable emission from the cavity mode persists up to room-temperature, in strong contrast the background emission vanishes for T > 150 K. An Ahrrenius type analysis of the temperature dependence of the luminescence signal recorded either in-resonance with the cavity mode, or weakly detuned, suggests that the higher temperature stability may arise from an enhanced internal quantum efficiency due to the Purcell-effect.
