2013/01/30 by Heedeuk Shin, Wenjun Qiu, Robert Jarecki +5 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #physics.optics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/ncomms2943
published as Nature.Comm. 4 (2013) 1944
arxiv created 2013/01/30 · arxiv updated 2013/06/25
While nanoscale modal confinement radically enhances a variety of nonlinear light-matter interactions within silicon waveguides, traveling-wave stimulated Brillouin scattering nonlinearities have never been observed in silicon nanophotonics. Through a new class of hybrid photonic-phononic waveguides, we demonstrate tailorable traveling-wave forward stimulated Brillouin scattering in nanophotonic silicon waveguides for the first time, yielding 3000 times stronger forward SBS responses than any previous waveguide system. Simulations reveal that a coherent combination of electrostrictive forces and radiation pressures are responsible for greatly enhanced photon-phonon coupling at nano-scales. Highly tailorable Brillouin nonlinearities are produced by engineering the structure of a membrane-suspended waveguide to yield Brillouin resonances from 1 to 18 GHz through high quality-factor (>1000) phonon modes. Such wideband and tailorable stimulated Brillouin scattering in silicon photonics could enable practical realization of on-chip slow-light devices, RF-photonic filtering and sensing, and ultra-narrow-band laser sources by using standard semiconductor fabrication and CMOS technologies.