Suppression of spontaneous emission for a two-dimensional honeycomb photonic bandgap structure estimated using a new effective-index model

The suppression of spontaneous emission introduced by a two-dimensional honeycomb-rod photonic bandgap structure is evaluated using the plane-wave expansion theory. An analysis of the out-of-plane angle dependency on the photonic bandgaps through the application of a new effective refractive-index model is presented. The in-plane properties for structures characterized by a rod dielectric constant in the range from 1.0 to 15.0, air background, and a filling fraction in the range from 0.07 to 0.4 are analyzed, and a structure with a relative in-plane bandgap of 10% is chosen. The out-of-plane angle analysis is performed for this structure, and it is found that propagation for modes within a narrow frequency interval is inhibited for a solid angle of 2.16 /spl pi/, covering 54% of the spontaneous emission from a narrow-linewidth point source.