In this dissertation experimental results are presented on controllinglight with nanophotonic media. The first part describes research onforbidden zones of light: frequency gaps in photonic crystals.Polarization-resolved and position-dependent reflectance spectroscopy onsilicon two- and three-dimensional photonic crystals revealed broad stopbands with record-high reflectivity exceeding 60%. A generaldiffraction phenomenon, called sub-Bragg diffraction, has beendiscovered and explained. Angle-averaged, polarization-resolved andposition-dependent spectra reveal a common stop band of up to16% gap-to-midgap frequency ratio for inverse woodpile photoniccrystals, forming a strong experimental signature of the presence of acomplete photonic band gap.The second part of this dissertation presents experiments on lightpropagation near the band edge in GaAs photonic-crystal waveguides.Phase-sensitive near-field microscopy was used to map light propagationwith sub-wavelength resolution, revealing periodic field patternsconsisting of superpositions of optical Bloch modes. A Bloch modereconstruction algorithm was tested to extract and study individualBloch modes. In the slow-light regime, the periodic field patterns areperturbed by Anderson-localized modes that form due tomultiple-scattering on intrinsic disorder. A detailed dispersion diagramhas been measured for a specific photonic-crystal waveguide. A methodwas introduced to reconstruct the density of optical states,constituting to the first experimental demonstration of an opticalLifshitz tail.The third part of this dissertation describes experiments towardsadaptive quantum optics. A high-rate entangled-photon source wasdeveloped based on type-II spontaneous parametric down conversion.Single-photon propagation in multiple-scattering media has beencontrolled with wavefront shaping. The probability that a photon arrivesat a target output speckle spot after propagation through a layer ofwhite paint has been increased 30-fold. Wavefront shaping techniques onclassical light have been successfully implemented to use opaquescattering media as a balanced optical beam splitter. This is the firstdemonstration of a multiple input and output wavefront shapingoptimization. This work can be extended to program quantum interferencein disordered photonic media in general, forming the outlook of adaptivequantum optics.

S. R. Huisman

2013

08/2013

University of Twente

photonics, quantum optics