Few-quantum-dot lasing in photonic crystal nanocavities

Photonic crystal nanolasers have attracted great interest both for fundamental research and applications in the past decade. In photonic crystal cavities, the leakage to optical modes is strongly reduced, which increases the spontaneous emission coupling factor, β. This is a crucial parameter for the threshold characteristics of lasers. With increasing β, the well-known step-like threshold behavior becomes smoother. Although the smooth lasing transitions of photonic crystal nanolasers were observed and fitted by traditional rate equation models [1], a systematic comparison between experiments and more advanced semiconductor models of photonic crystal nanolasers is still missing [2]. The goal of this work is to get a deep understanding of the quantum dots based nanocavity lasers by comparing experiments to theory.