Scanning near-field optical microscopy of quantum dots in photonic crystal cavities

Nanophotonic devices are of major interest for research and future quantum communication applications. Due to their nanometer feature size the resolution limit of far-field microscopy poses a limitation on the characterization of their optical properties. A method to overcome the resolution limit is the Scanning Near-Field Optical Microscope (SNOM). By approaching a fiber tip into the close vicinity of the sample the optical emission in the near-field regime is collected. This way of collecting the light is not affected by the diffraction limit. We employ a low temperature SNOM to investigate the photoluminescence of InAs QDs emitting at 1300nm wavelength embedded in photonic crystal cavities. At each location of an image scan the tip is stopped and a spectrum is acquired. We then plot maps of the photoluminescence for each wavelength. With this instrument it is now possible to directly observe the coupling of QDs to photonic crystal cavities both spectrally and spatially. We show first results of photoluminescence mapping of InAs QDs in photonic crystal cavities.