No Arabic abstract
High index optical waveguide devices such as slab waveguides, strip waveguides and fibers play extremely important roles in a wide range of modern applications including telecommunications, sensing, lasing, interferometry, and resonant amplification. Yet, transposing these advantageous applications from optics to acoustics remains a fundamental practical challenge, since most materials exhibit refractive indices lower than that of air for sound waves. Here, we demonstrate the relevance of acoustic metamaterials for tackling this pivotal problem. More specifically, we consider a metamaterial built from subwavelength air-filled acoustic pipes engineered to effectively exhibit a higher refractive index than homogenous air. We show that such medium can be employed to realize acoustic equivalents of dielectric slab or strip waveguides, and optical fibers. Unlike conventional acoustic pipes, our guiding approach allows the waveguide to remain open to the external medium, which opens a plethora of new opportunities in noise management, medical imaging, underwater communication systems, and sensing.
The recent breakthrough in metamaterial-based optical computing devices [Science 343, 160 (2014)] has inspired a quest for similar systems in acoustics, performing mathematical operations on sound waves. So far, acoustic analog computing has been demonstrated using thin planar metamaterials, carrying out the operator of choice in Fourier domain. These so-called filtering metasurfaces, however, are always accompanied with additional Fourier transform sub-blocks, enlarging the computing system and preventing its applicability in miniaturized architectures. Here, employing a simple high-index acoustic slab waveguide, we demonstrate a highly compact and potentially integrable acoustic computing system. The system directly performs mathematical operation in spatial domain and is therefore free of any Fourier bulk lens. Such compact computing system is highly promising for various applications including high throughput image processing, ultrafast equation solving, and real time signal processing.
We numerically model key building blocks of a phononic integrated circuit that enable phonon routing in high-acoustic-index waveguides. Our particular focus is on Gallium Nitride-on-sapphire phononic platform which has recently demonstrated high acoustic confinement in its top layer without the use of suspended structures. We start with systematic simulation of various transverse phonon modes supported in strip waveguides and ring resonators with sub-wavelength cross-section. Mode confinement and quality factors of phonon modes are numerically investigated with respect to geometric parameters. Quality factor up to $10^{8}$ is predicted in optimized ring resonators. We next study the design of the phononic directional couplers, and present key design parameters for achieving strong evanescent couplings between modes propagating in parallel waveguides. Last, interdigitated transducer electrodes are included in the simulation for direct excitation of a ring resonator and critical coupling between microwave input and phononic dissipation. Our work provides comprehensive numerical characterization of phonon modes and functional phononic components in high-acoustic-index phononic circuits, which supplements previous theories and contributes to the emerging field of phononic integrated circuits.
Optical isolators and circulators are indispensable for photonic integrated circuits (PICs). Despite of significant progress in silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platforms, integrated optical isolators and circulators have been rarely reported on silicon nitride (SiN) platforms. In this paper, we report monolithic integration of magneto-optical (MO) isolators on SiN platforms with record high performances based on standard silicon photonics foundry process and magneto-optical thin film deposition. We successfully grow high quality MO garnet thin films on SiN with large Faraday rotation up to -5900 deg/cm. We show a superior magneto-optical figure of merit (FoM) of MO/SiN waveguides compared to that of MO/SOI in an optimized device design. We demonstrate TM/TE mode broadband and narrow band optical isolators and circulators on SiN with high isolation ratio, low cross talk and low insertion loss. In particular, we observe 1 dB insertion loss and 28 dB isolation ratio in a SiN racetrack resonator-based isolator at 1570.2 nm wavelength. The low thermo-optic coefficient of SiN also ensures excellent temperature stability of the device. Our work paves the way for integration of high performance nonreciprocal photonic devices on SiN platforms.
By offering effective modal volumes significantly less than a cubic wavelength, slot-waveguide cavities offer a new in-road into strong atom-photon coupling in the visible regime. Here we explore two-dimensional arrays of coupled slot cavities which underpin designs for novel quantum emulators and polaritonic quantum phase transition devices. Specifically, we investigate the lateral coupling characteristics of diamond-air and GaP-air slot waveguides using numerically-assisted coupled-mode theory, and the longitudinal coupling properties via distributed Bragg reflectors using mode-propagation simulations. We find that slot-waveguide cavities in the Fabry-Perot arrangement can be coupled and effectively treated with a tight-binding description, and are a suitable platform for realizing Jaynes-Cummings-Hubbard physics.
The coherent manipulation of acoustic waves on the nanoscale usually requires multilayers with thicknesses and interface roughness defined down to the atomic monolayer. This results in expensive devices with predetermined functionality. Nanoscale mesoporous materials present high surface-to-volume ratio and tailorable mesopores, which allow the incorporation of chemical functionalization to nanoacoustics. However, the presence of pores with sizes comparable to the acoustic wavelength is intuitively perceived as a major roadblock in nanoacoustics. Here we present multilayered nanoacoustic resonators based on mesoporous SiO$_2$ thin-films showing acoustic resonances in the 5-100 GHz range. We characterize the acoustic response of the system using coherent phonon generation experiments. Despite resonance wavelengths comparable to the pore size, we observe for the first time unexpectedly well-defined acoustic resonances with Q-factors around 10. Our results open the path to a promising platform for nanoacoustic sensing and reconfigurable acoustic nanodevices based on soft, inexpensive fabrication methods.