Photonic crystal heterostructures implemented with vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers

For nearly 20 years, progress in the field of photonic crystals has greatly benefited from analogies to semiconductor physics and devices. Here we implement the concept of photonic crystal heterojunction and heterostructures, analogues to the concept of the semiconductor heterostructure, and demonstrate devices based on this concept operating in the optical range of frequency spectrum. In particular, we examine the effect of confinement of the photonic envelope wavefunction in a two-dimensional photonic heterostructure quantum well implemented with quasi-periodic array of vertical-cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) as a model system.