| This thesis contains work from two separate projects, a study of the efficiency of light emitting diodes, and a tapered-fiber approach to photonic crystal integrated photonics. The first part of this thesis describes an experimental investigation of the quantum efficiency of InGaN-based light emitters. Blue and Green LEDs that utilize InGaN quantum wells for their active medium suffer from a reduction in efficiency with increasing bias. This phenomenon is called efficiency droop.;In this thesis experimental evidence for significant quenching of photon population in InGaN is presented and its relevance to the efficiency droop problem in InGaN-based light emitting structures is discussed. An equilibrium rate equation model is set up to demonstrate that radiative efficiency for this loss mechanism not only has a similar dependence on carrier density as Auger recombination process, but it also possesses the right order of magnitude making it difficult to distinguish between the two and possibly leading to errors in interpretation. The impact of photon quenching processes on device performance is emphasized by demonstrating loss of efficiency for spectral regions where there is experimental evidence for photon quenching. We have observed this phenomenon for both c-plane and m-plane light emitting structures. Both structures exhibit droop-like behavior for spectral regions where there is evidence for photon quenching. We have also observed and characterized the dynamical Stark effect for an m-plane light emitter considered in this manuscript. Our results revealed localization centers with a corresponding band-edge energy of 388nm and an excitonic binding energy of 17.81mev. Furthermore, fabrication of a photonic crystal waveguide fiber taper coupler is demonstrated with a peak coupling efficiency of 97 %. All four ports of the device are accessible providing an opportunity for investigation of simultaneous interaction of different light sources inside the photonic crystal cavity. A numerical model is set forth to analyze such devices with an excellent agreement with the experimental data. One important result of that theory is the ability to experimentally extract the phase contribution of optical resonators that employ periodic structures such as photonic crystal cavities. This device has also been used to demonstrate all-optical nonlinear shift and bleaching of cavity resonances via non-degenerate two photon absorption, non-degenerate Kerr mechanism, free carrier absorption, and free carrier plasma effects. As the response time of two photon processes are very fast, about 10 fs, this device can be used in ultrafast low energy all optical switching applications. |
