High-Q photonic crystal microcavities fabricated in a thin GaAs membrane

Photonic crystal microcavities in thin GaAs membranes having H1 and H2 defects for lattice constants as small as 255 nm were fabricated. In the H2 microcavities, cavity resonances with very large Q factors were observed. Furthermore it was demonstrated that by varying the lattice constant, it is possible to design microcavities with modes for a wide range of wavelengths. Finally, the symmetry degeneracy of the high-Q modes was found to be split by the perturbation related to errors introduced by the fabrication process.