Enhanced light extraction in Er3+ doped SiO2–TiO2 microcavity embedded in one-dimensional photonic crystal

Abstract Erbium doped silica–titania one-dimensional photonic crystal microcavities have been analyzed by solving the erbium rate equations and the Maxwell equations by means of an auxiliary differential equation finite difference time domain technique. The interaction time between light and matter is enhanced by the presence of microcavity, used to localize the light inside the PC and allows to achieve a significant gain. The investigation treats the influence of the pump signal power, the device length and the dopant concentration, on the optical amplification in correspondence of the defect resonance. A comparison between the erbium doped photonic crystal microcavities and erbium doped photonic crystal band edge amplifiers is reported as well, which shows a higher compactness of the erbium doped photonic crystal microcavities respect with the erbium doped photonic crystals.