Interaction between light and highly confined hypersound in a silicon photonic nanowire

Abstract

In the past decade, there has been a surge in research at the boundary between photonics and phononics. Most efforts centered on coupling light to motion in a high-quality optical cavity, typically geared towards observing the quantum state of a mechanical oscillator. It was recently predicted that the strength of the light-sound interaction would increase drastically in nanoscale silicon photonic wires. Here we demonstrate, for the first time, such a giant overlap between near-infrared light and gigahertz sound co-localized in a small-core silicon wire. The wire is supported by a tiny pillar to block the path for external phonon leakage, trapping $10\text{GHz}$ phonons in an area below $0.1\mathbf{\mu }{\text{m}}^2$. Since our geometry can be coiled up to form a ring cavity, it paves the way for complete fusion between the worlds of cavity optomechanics and Brillouin scattering. The result bodes well for the realization of low-footprint optically-pumped lasers/sasers and delay lines on a densely integrated silicon chip.

References in corpus (2)

• Brillouin Lasing with a CaF_2 Whispering Gallery Mode Resonator
• High-Q Nanomechanics via Destructive Interference of Elastic Waves

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