Abstract
Improving and controlling the efficiency of a gain medium is one of the most challenging problems of laser research. By measuring the gain length in an opal-based photonic crystal doped with laser dye, we demonstrate that optical amplification is more than twenty-fold enhanced along the - symmetry directions of the face-centered-cubic photonic crystal. These results are theoretically explained by directional variations of the density of states, providing a quantitative connection between density of the states and light amplification.
- Received 16 September 2010
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.83.023801
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