No Arabic abstract
A passive white light cavity (WLC) based on a fiber resonator can be used for high-bandwidth optical data buffering. Here, we report on experimental studies of such a WLC, employing stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS)for producing the negative dispersion, using two different configurations. In one configuration, an absorption peak produced by a Brillouin pump is used. In the other configuration, two gain peaks produced by two separate Brillouin pumps are employed. In each case, we see evidence of the WLC effect. However, the range of parameters accessible experimentally limits the degree of the WLC effect significantly. We present a theoretical analysis for the optimal combinations of parameters, such as a high Brillouin gain coefficient and a low transmission loss, necessary for achieving the condition of a vanishing group index, as required for creating an ideal WLC.
We compute the SBS gain for a metamaterial comprising a cubic lattice of dielectric spheres suspended in a background dielectric material. Theoretical methods are presented to calculate the optical, acoustic, and opto-acoustic parameters that describe the SBS properties of the material at long wavelengths. Using the electromagnetic and strain energy densities we accurately characterise the optical and acoustic properties of the metamaterial. From a combination of energy density methods and perturbation theory, we recover the appropriate terms of the photoelastic tensor for the metamaterial. We demonstrate that electrostriction is not necessarily the dominant mechanism in the enhancement and suppression of the SBS gain coefficient in a metamaterial, and that other parameters, such as the Brillouin linewidth, can dominate instead. Examples are presented that exhibit an order of magnitude enhancement in the SBS gain as well as perfect suppression.
Using full opto-acoustic numerical simulations, we demonstrate enhancement and suppression of the SBS gain in a metamaterial comprising a subwavelength cubic array of dielectric spheres suspended in a dielectric background material. We develop a general theoretical framework and present several numerical examples using technologically important materials. For As$_2$S$_3$ spheres in silicon, we achieve a gain enhancement of more than an order of magnitude compared to pure silicon, and for GaAs spheres in silicon, full suppression is obtained. The gain for As$_2$S$_3$ glass can also be strongly suppressed by embedding silica spheres. The constituent terms of the gain coefficient are shown to depend in a complex way on the filling fraction. We find that electrostriction is the dominant effect behind the control of SBS in bulk media.
Stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) has been demonstrated in silicon waveguides in recent years. However, due to the weak interaction between photons and acoustic phonons in these waveguides, long interaction length is typically necessary. Here, we experimentally show that forward stimulated Brillouin scattering in a short interaction length of a 20 um radius silicon microring resonator could give 1.2 dB peak gain at only 10mW coupled pump power. The experimental results demonstrate that both optical and acoustic modes can have efficient interaction in a short interaction length. The observed Brillouin gain varies with coupled pump power in good agreement with theoretical prediction. The work shows the potential of SBS in silicon for moving the demonstrated fiber SBS applications to the integrated silicon photonics platform.
Silicon is an ideal material for on-chip applications, however its poor acoustic properties limit its performance for important optoacoustic applications, particularly for Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS). We theoretically show that silicon inverse opals exhibit a strongly improved acoustic performance that enhances the bulk SBS gain coefficient by more than two orders of magnitude. We also design a waveguide that incorporates silicon inverse opals and which has SBS gain values that are comparable with chalcogenide glass waveguides. This research opens new directions for opto-acoustic applications in on-chip material systems.
We report a theoretical study of Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS) in general anisotropic media, incorporating the effects of both acoustic strain and local rotation in all calculations. We apply our general theoretical framework to compute the SBS gain for layered media with periodic length scales smaller than all optical and acoustic wavelengths, where such composites behave like homogeneous anisotropic media. We theoretically predict that a layered medium comprising nanometre-thin layers of silicon and As$_2$S$_3$ glass possesses a bulk SBS gain of $1.28 times 10^{-9} , mathrm{W}^{-1} , mathrm{m}$. This is more than 500 times larger than the gain coefficient of silicon, and substantially larger than the gain of As$_2$S$_3$. The enhancement is due to a combination of roto-optic, photoelastic, and artificial photoelastic contributions in the composite structure.