Open AccessGiant enhancement of stimulated Brillouin scattering with engineered phoxonic crystal waveguides
Author(s) -
Zejie Yu,
Xiankai Sun
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.394
H-Index - 271
ISSN - 1094-4087
DOI - 10.1364/oe.26.001255
Subject(s) - brillouin scattering , optics , materials science , optoelectronics , waveguide , miniaturization , brillouin zone , amplifier , wavelength , optical amplifier , signal (programming language) , light scattering , nonlinear optics , laser , scattering , physics , nanotechnology , cmos , computer science , programming language
Stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) is a third-order nonlinear process that involves the interaction of two light fields and an acoustic wave in a medium. It has been exploited for applications of optical communication, sensing, and signal processing. This effect, originally demonstrated in long optical fibers, has recently been realized in silicon waveguides on a chip-scale integrated platform. However, due to the weak per-unit-length SBS gain, the length of the silicon waveguides is usually several centimeters, which prevents device miniaturization for high-density integration. Here, we engineer a phoxonic crystal waveguide structure to achieve significantly enhanced SBS gain in the entire C band, by taking advantage of its simultaneous confinement of slow propagating optical and acoustic waves. The resulting SBS gain coefficient is greater than 3 × 10 4 W -1 m -1 in the wavelength range of 1520-1565 nm with the highest value beyond 10 6 W -1 m -1 , which is at least an order of magnitude higher than the existing demonstrations. This giant enhancement of SBS gain enables ultracompact and high-performance SBS-based integrated optoelectronic devices such as Brillouin lasers, amplifiers, and signal processors.