Rabi splitting and photonic modes in laterally patterned microcavities

The optical properties and local electromagnetic fields of a 3/2 ? planar microcavity, with a 1D dielectric grating at one of the antinodes, are computed in the semiclassical framework and in the effective mass approximation. In a previous paper the authors have shown that the insertion of a thick grating, with reciprocal lattice vector close to the light dispersion curve of the system, gives two main effects: (i) more reflection dips, rather thin and well separated in energy, appear in the stop band of the system, and (ii) a large enhancement of the vacuum Rabi energy can be obtained in the case of exciton transition in resonance with a selected dip in the stop band. In the present paper a strong distortion of the local field and a huge enhancement of its intensity at quantum well location are observed for a thick grating with respect to the normal planar cavity case. These properties are crucial for explaining the Rabi splitting enhancement of the system. Finally, the different behaviour for 1D and 2D gratings with respect to the light polarization will be briefly discussed.