Microscopic analysis of the optical and electronic properties of semiconductor photonic‐crystal structures

The combination of dielectric photonic crystals and semiconductor nanostructures makes it possible to design many important aspects of the optoelectronic system response. A spatially-varying dielectric environment induces modifications of the transversal and the longitudinal components of the electromagnetic field which have to be included in the self-consistent microscopic analysis of the optical properties of hybrid semiconductor photonic-crystal structures. In this paper, the development of a semiclassical microscopic theory is reviewed. Whereas the classical electromagnetic field is described at the level of Maxwell's equations, a full many-body quantum theory is used for the interacting electronic excitations in the semiconductor material. Relevant examples of the numerical solutions of the resulting Maxwell semiconductor Bloch equations are presented showing, e.g., characteristic modifications of excitonic absorption spectra, the spatio-temporal dynamics of electronic wave packets, as well as an increase of the optical gain in properly designed device geometries.