Spontaneous emission rates inside an omni-directional mirror

Summary form only given. The omnidirectional mirror (ODM), which offers metallic-like reflection properties with much lower losses, was first reported in 1998 by Joannopoulos and coworkers and attracted a lot of attention. The omnidirectional reflection is due to a band of frequencies for which no propagation into the mirror is possible for any angle of incidence. The ODM is a special example of a Bragg mirror; it consists of alternating high and low index layers with almost equal optical thickness grown such that the dielectric contrast changes periodically on the scale of an optical wavelength. ODMs are often referred to as photonic band gap materials, because there is a range of frequencies for which no propagation is possible.