Ultra-high quality factor optical resonators based on semiconductor nanowires.

We propose a platform to achieve ultra-high Quality factor (Q) optical resonators based on semiconductor nanowires. By defining onedimensional photonic crystal at nanowire ends and engineering the microcavity pattern, cavities with Q of 3 x 10(5) and mode volume smaller than 0.2(lambda/n)(3) have been designed. This represents an increase of almost three orders of magnitude over the Quality factor of an as-grown nanowire. Our cavities are well-suited for the realization of nanowire-based low-threshold lasers, single-photon sources and quantum optical devices that operate in the strong-coupling limit.