Spontaneous emission control of single quantum dots by electromechanical tuning of a photonic crystal cavity

We demonstrate the control of the spontaneous emission rate of single InAs quantum dots embedded in a double-membrane photonic crystal cavity by the electromechanical tuning of the cavity resonance. Controlling the separation between the two membranes with an electrostatic field, we obtain the real-time spectral alignment of the cavity mode to the excitonic line and we observe an enhancement of the spontaneous emission rate at resonance. The cavity has been tuned over 13 nm without shifting the exciton energies. A spontaneous emission enhancement of ≈ 4.5 has been achieved with a coupling efficiency of the dot to the mode β ≈ 92 . © 2012 American Institute of Physics