Coupled dipole method for radiation dynamics in finite photonic crystal structures.

We present a coupled-dipole treatment of radiation dynamics in the weak-coupling regime in a finite three-dimensional photonic crystal structure. The structure is discretized in real space and the self-consistent local field is computed. We illustrate the computation of radiation dynamics by calculating the spontaneous emission rate for a source located in a defect cavity inside a slab photonic crystal structure.

Near-field observation of subwavelength confinement of photoluminescence by a photonic crystal microcavity.

We present a direct, room-temperature near-field optical study of light confinement by a subwavelength defect microcavity in a photonic crystal slab containing quantum-well sources. The observations are compared with three-dimensional finite-difference time-domain calculations, and excellent agreement is found. Moreover, we use a subwavelength cavity to study the influence of a near-field probe on the imaging of localized optical modes.