Brillouin scattering in optical fibres is a fundamental interaction between light and sound with important implications ranging from optical sensors to slow and fast light. In usual optical fibres, light both excites and feels shear and longitudinal bulk elastic waves, giving rise to forward-guided acoustic wave Brillouin scattering and backward-stimulated Brillouin scattering. In a subwavelength-diameter optical fibre, the situation changes dramatically, as we here report with the first experimental observation of Brillouin light scattering from surface acoustic waves. These Rayleigh-type surface waves travel the wire surface at a specific velocity of 3,400 m s−1 and backscatter the light with a Doppler shift of about 6 GHz. As these acoustic resonances are sensitive to surface defects or features, surface acoustic wave Brillouin scattering opens new opportunities for various sensing applications, but also in other domains such as microwave photonics and nonlinear plasmonics.

No abstract

No abstract

International audienceWe present the first experimental demonstrations of stimulated Raman scattering in a liquid probed by the evanescent field of a tapered silica nanofiber. Raman scattering by a pure liquid, ethanol, or mixture of liquids, toluene diluted in ethanol, is investigated. Given the large choice of available materials for the medium surrounding the nanofiber, these demonstrations pave the way to the exploration of a new class of experiments and devices

The advantages and limitations of data storage in holographic materials by implementing a pure phase-encoding method of the reference beam are studied. We show that if deterministic orthogonal binary phase addresses are used, such a system is theoretically able to store as many images as the usual angular multiplexing method. However, we demonstrate that imperfections of available optical components generate optical noise and limit the storage capacity. We propose an improved recording technique to overcome some of these limitations.

Nanofibres can be produced with diameters smaller than the wavelength of the light they guide. In this regime, the guided mode presents a strong evanescent field well adapted to the excitation of "evanescent nonlinearities". We theoretically investigate such an evanescent nonlinearity: the Raman interaction between the evanescent field and a liquid surrounding the nanofibre. Our calculations demonstrate that the Raman conversion is obtained with nanofibre lengths an order of magnitude lower than those required for liquid core photonic crystal fibres.

No abstract

No abstract