Defect states in three-dimensional diamond photonic band gap crystals

Abstract

We perform a theoretical study of defect states within the photonic band gap of three-dimensional diamond crystals composed of point scatterers and doped with substitutional defects. The defects introduce localized states inside the photonic band gap, whose existence conditions and eigenfrequencies are expressed in terms of the on-site Green's function of the ideal defect-free crystal. Off-site Green's functions are also calculated as function of distance and are shown to vanish within approximately two unit cells. Finite-size effects are analyzed by comparing the results obtained in the infinite-crystal limit with numerical simulations based on the coupled-dipole method. The latter not only reproduce the eigenfrequencies of the defect states within the band gap, but also provide their lifetimes originating from the finite crystal size. The lifetimes of the defect states increase exponentially with crystal size, becoming very long for large crystals. In addition to defect states in the three-dimensional photonic band gap, the defects also give rise to strongly detuned states outside the gap, which decouple from the spectrum of the ideal defect-free crystal.