Circularly polarized vacuum field in three-dimensional chiral photonic crystals probed by quantum dot emission

Abstract

The modification of a circularly polarized vacuum field in three-dimensional chiral photonic crystals was measured by spontaneous emission from quantum dots in the structures. Due to the circularly polarized eigenmodes along the helical axis in the GaAs-based mirror-asymmetric structures involved, the authors observed highly circularly-polarized emission from the quantum dots. Both spectroscopic and time-resolved measurements confirmed that the obtained circularly-polarized light was influenced by a large difference in the photonic density of states between the orthogonal components of the circular polarization in the vacuum field.