Control of coherent information via on-chip photonic–phononic emitter–receivers

Shin, Heedeuk; Cox, James C.; Jarecki, Robert; Starbuck, Andrew; Wang, Zheng; Rakich, Peter T.

doi:10.1038/ncomms7427

Cited by 155 publications

(182 citation statements)

References 60 publications

(129 reference statements)

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“…With high power input couplers, this waveguide geometry readily supports guided powers of 150 mW [12]. Furthermore, low propagation losses permit exceptionally large (25 cm) propagation lengths.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Only recently have strong Brillouin interactions been realized in a new class of optomechanical structures that control the interaction between guided photons and phonons [5][6][7]. With careful design, such Brillouin nonlinearities overtake all other nonlinear processes in silicon [6,7]; these same Brillouin interactions are remarkably tailorable, permitting a range of hybrid photonic-phononic signal processing operations that have no analog in all-optical signal processing [8][9][10][11][12]. Using this physics, the rapidly growing field of silicon-based Brillouin-photonics has produced new frequency agile RFphotonic notch filters [8,10,13,14] and multi-pole bandpass filters [12] as the basis for radio-frequency photonic (RF-photonic) signal processing.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Using this physics, the rapidly growing field of silicon-based Brillouin-photonics has produced new frequency agile RFphotonic notch filters [8,10,13,14] and multi-pole bandpass filters [12] as the basis for radio-frequency photonic (RF-photonic) signal processing. Beyond these specific examples, the potential impact of such Brillouin interactions is immense; frequency combs [13,15,16], ultra-low phasenoise lasers [17][18][19], sensors [9,12,20], optical isolation [21][22][23][24], and an array of signal processing technologies [8,[12][13][14][25][26][27]] may be possible in silicon with further progress.However, strong Brillouin amplification-essential to many new Brillouin-based technologies-has yet to be realized in silicon photonics. Despite the creation of strong Brillouin nonlinearities in a range of new structures [6,7], nonlinear losses and free carrier effects have stifled attempts to demonstrate net optical amplification.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Large Brillouin amplification in silicon

2016

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Strong Brillouin coupling has only recently been realized in silicon using a new class of optomechanical waveguides that yield both optical and phononic confinement. Despite these major advances, appreciable Brillouin amplification has yet to be observed in silicon. Using a new membrane-suspended silicon waveguide we report large Brillouin amplification for the first time, reaching levels greater than 5 dB for modest pump powers, and demonstrate a record low (5 mW) threshold for net amplification. This work represents a crucial advance necessary to realize highperformance Brillouin lasers and amplifiers in silicon.Both Kerr and Raman nonlinearities are radically enhanced by tight optical-mode confinement in nanoscale silicon waveguides [1][2][3][4]. Counter-intuitively, Brillouin nonlinearities are exceedingly weak in these same nonlinear waveguides [5]. Only recently have strong Brillouin interactions been realized in a new class of optomechanical structures that control the interaction between guided photons and phonons [5][6][7]. With careful design, such Brillouin nonlinearities overtake all other nonlinear processes in silicon [6,7]; these same Brillouin interactions are remarkably tailorable, permitting a range of hybrid photonic-phononic signal processing operations that have no analog in all-optical signal processing [8][9][10][11][12]. Using this physics, the rapidly growing field of silicon-based Brillouin-photonics has produced new frequency agile RFphotonic notch filters [8,10,13,14] and multi-pole bandpass filters [12] as the basis for radio-frequency photonic (RF-photonic) signal processing. Beyond these specific examples, the potential impact of such Brillouin interactions is immense; frequency combs [13,15,16], ultra-low phasenoise lasers [17][18][19], sensors [9,12,20], optical isolation [21][22][23][24], and an array of signal processing technologies [8,[12][13][14][25][26][27]] may be possible in silicon with further progress.However, strong Brillouin amplification-essential to many new Brillouin-based technologies-has yet to be realized in silicon photonics. Despite the creation of strong Brillouin nonlinearities in a range of new structures [6,7], nonlinear losses and free carrier effects have stifled attempts to demonstrate net optical amplification. Only recently, Van Laer et al. reported 0.5 dB (12%) amplification [28] using suspended silicon nanowire structures. Even with superb dimensional control, amplification diminishes with longer interaction lengths [28], highlighting the problem of dimensionally induced inhomogenous broadening [29]. Careful theoretical analyses by Wolff et al., suggest that large net amplification is fundamentally challenging to achieve in silicon nanowires at near-IR wavelengths due to nonlinear absorption [30].In this paper, we report large Brillouin amplification in silicon through an alternative device paradigm; using a new all-silicon membrane structure (Fig. 1) that permits independent design of photonic and phononic modes, we demonstrate net amplification a...

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Large Brillouin amplification in silicon

2016

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“…In silicon waveguides, the use of confinement to enhance amplification has been studied [20]. SBS is also a powerful tool for integrated photonics signal processing [21][22][23], and it has been applied to realize a chip-based optical gyroscope [24]. Moreover, at radio-frequency rates, the SBS damping rate is low enough in certain systems to enable cavity optomechanical effects [25] including optomechanical cooling [26] and optomechanical-induced transparency [27].…”

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Phonon-Limited-Linewidth of Brillouin Lasers at Cryogenic Temperatures

2017

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Laser linewidth is of central importance in spectroscopy, frequency metrology, and all applications of lasers requiring high coherence. It is also of fundamental importance, because the Schawlow-Townes laser linewidth limit is of quantum origin. Recently, a theory of stimulated Brillouin laser (SBL) linewidth has been reported. While the SBL linewidth formula exhibits power and optical Q factor dependences that are identical to the Schawlow-Townes formula, a source of noise not present in conventional lasers, phonon occupancy of the Brillouin mechanical mode is predicted to be the dominant SBL linewidth contribution. Moreover, the quantum limit of the SBL linewidth is predicted to be twice the Schawlow-Townes limit on account of phonon participation. To help confirm this theory the SBL fundamental linewidth is measured at cryogenic temperatures in a silica microresonator. Its temperature dependence and the SBL linewidth theory are combined to predict the number of thermomechanical quanta at three temperatures. The result agrees with the Bose-Einstein phonon occupancy of the microwave-rate Brillouin mode in support of the SBL linewidth theory prediction. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.143901 Stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) is a third-order (χ 3 ) optical nonlinearity that results from the interaction between photons and acoustic phonons in a medium [1][2][3][4]. SBS has practical importance in optical fiber systems [5,6] where it is an important signal impairment mechanism in long-distance transmission systems [7] and makes possible all-fiber lasers [8] as well as tunable, slow-light generation [9]. Power fluctuation resulting from thermal phonons has also been studied in fiber-optic SBS Stokes wave generation [10], and the intensity and phase noise have been measured in narrow-linewidth Brillouin lasers [11]. More recently, the SBS process has attracted considerable interest in microscale and nanoscale devices [12]. Brillouin laser action has been demonstrated in several microcavity resonator systems including silica [13][14][15][16], CaF 2 [17], and silicon [18], and Brillouin amplification has been demonstrated in integrated chalcogenide waveguides [19]. In silicon waveguides, the use of confinement to enhance amplification has been studied [20]. SBS is also a powerful tool for integrated photonics signal processing [21][22][23], and it has been applied to realize a chip-based optical gyroscope [24]. Moreover, at radio-frequency rates, the SBS damping rate is low enough in certain systems to enable cavity optomechanical effects [25] including optomechanical cooling [26] and optomechanical-induced transparency [27].This work studies a recent prediction concerning the fundamental linewidth (i.e., nontechnical noise contribution to linewidth) of the stimulated Brillouin laser (SBL). The analysis of fundamental fluctuations in Brillouin devices falls into a more general category of optomechanical oscillators in which phonons participate in the oscillation process [28,29]. This participation creates a channe...

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“…2 Key examples include strong enhancement of stimulated Brillouin scattering in silica [3][4][5] and silicon [6][7][8] nanowires, spontaneous Brillouin cooling, 9 and on-chip stimulated Brillouin scattering. [10][11][12] Whereas in these cases light scatters from propagating acoustic waves, a fundamentally different situation emerges if the driven vibrational resonance is almost entirely transverse: the frequency spacing of the sidebands does not change anymore with the pump frequency so that the optoacoustic interaction closely resembles Raman scattering by molecules. This means that the frequency-wavevector diagram of the associated phonon is very flat, i.e., its wavevector can be freely chosen while keeping its frequency fixed.…”

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Resolving the mystery of milliwatt-threshold opto-mechanical self-oscillation in dual-nanoweb fiber

et al. 2016

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It is interesting to pose the question: How best to design an optomechanical device, with no electronics, optical cavity, or laser gain, that will self-oscillate when pumped in a single pass with only a few mW of single-frequency laser power? One might begin with a mechanically resonant and highly compliant system offering very high optomechanical gain. Such a system, when pumped by single-frequency light, might self-oscillate at its resonant frequency. It is well-known, however, that this will occur only if the group velocity dispersion of the light is high enough so that phonons causing pump-to-Stokes conversion are sufficiently dissimilar to those causing pump-to-anti-Stokes conversion. Recently it was reported that two light-guiding membranes 20 μm wide, ∼500 nm thick and spaced by ∼500 nm, suspended inside a glass fiber capillary, oscillated spontaneously at its mechanical resonant frequency (∼6 MHz) when pumped with only a few mW of single-frequency light. This was surprising, since perfect Raman gain suppression would be expected. In detailed measurements, using an interferometric side-probing technique capable of resolving nanoweb movements as small as 10 pm, we map out the vibrations along the fiber and show that stimulated intermodal scattering to a higher-order optical mode frustrates gain suppression, permitting the structure to self-oscillate. A detailed theoretical analysis confirms this picture. This novel mechanism makes possible the design of single-pass optomechanical oscillators that require only a few mW of optical power, no electronics nor any optical resonator. The design could also be implemented in silicon or any other suitable material.

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Control of coherent information via on-chip photonic–phononic emitter–receivers

Cited by 155 publications

References 60 publications

Large Brillouin amplification in silicon

Large Brillouin amplification in silicon

Phonon-Limited-Linewidth of Brillouin Lasers at Cryogenic Temperatures

Resolving the mystery of milliwatt-threshold opto-mechanical self-oscillation in dual-nanoweb fiber

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