Enhancement of spontaneous emission decay rate in photonic nano-cavities based on Bloch Surface Waves

Plasmonic nanoantennas have been demonstrated to achieve high spontaneous emission rate enhancement. The main drawback of plasmonic nanostructures is their high absorption at optical frequencies. An alternative platform is... [ view full abstract ]

Plasmonic nanoantennas have been demonstrated to achieve high spontaneous emission rate enhancement. The main drawback of plasmonic nanostructures is their high absorption at optical frequencies. An alternative platform is based on dielectric multilayer (also called one dimensional photonic crystal–1DPC) sustaining surface electromagnetic modes at the truncation interface with the external medium. We propose a fuorescent nano-cavity on multilayer able to confine emitted radiation in subwavelength resonant modes. Emission spectra feature narrow peaks corresponding to the fundamental mode of the cavity, whilst lifetime measurements reveal an enhancement of the spontaneous emission  in good agreement with full-wave simulations.