Photonic chip based tunable slow and fast light via stimulated Brillouin scattering

Abstract

The ability to control the speed of light on an optical chip is fundamental to the development of nanophotonic components for alloptical signal processing and sensing [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. However this is a significant challenge, because chip-scale waveguides require very large changes in group index (Δn g ) to achieve appreciable pulse delays. Here, we use Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS) to report the demonstration of on-chip slow, fast and negative group velocities with Δn g ranging from −44 to +130, and delays of up to 23ns at a pump power of ~300mW and propagation length of 7cm. These results are obtained using a highly-nonlinear chalocogenide (As 2 S 3 ) rib waveguide, in which the confinement of both photons and phonons results in strong interaction. SBS can be used to achieve controllable pulse delays at room temperature over a large wavelength and signal-bandwidth [5]. These results open up a new set of photonic applications ranging from microwave photonics [8] to spectrometry [4].

Inducing and harnessing stimulated Brillouin scattering in photonic integrated circuits

“…The important parameter in a slow-light device Principle of Brillouin slow-light demonstrating pulse delay when the pump was turned on. A probe pulse centered at the Stokes (anti-Stokes) frequency ω s (ω as ) experiences large positive (negative) index slope resulting in slow-(fast-) light [57]. Copyright 2012, Optical Society of America.…”

“…This shows that the chip-based SBS slow-light device is not only compact but is highly efficient as well. While tunable delays can be obtained using SBS slow-and fast-light, recently it was shown that dynamic Brillouin gratings can be used to achieve large Group-index measurements for (a) slow-light and (b) fast-light regime using SBS in a photonic chip [57]. Copyright 2012, Optical Society of America.…”

“…In recent years, there has been a remarkable surge of interest in SBS, largely driven by the ability to harness the effect on the nanoscale. The ability to generate SBS in chip-scale nano-photonic devices [50][51][52][53][54][55] has opened a plethora of opportunities for photonic integration of applications such as Brillouin lasers and microwave generation and signal processing [56][57][58][59][60][61], tailoring the interaction between light and sound [53][54][55], Brillouin cooling, and opto-mechanics [62,63].…”

Reconfigurable and frequency-agile on-chip microwave photonic bandpass and bandstop filters using stimulated Brillouin scattering

“…On-chip SBS has been demonstrated on a chalcogenide (As 2 S 3 ) on silica (SiO 2 ) platform with gains approaching 23 dB [5]. Using this integrated platform, microwave photonic bandpass filters have been demonstrated with a bandwidth of 20 MHz-40 MHz [6].…”

Enhanced stimulated Brillouin scattering in chalcogenide elliptical photonic crystal fibres

“…It is a nonlinear phenomenon arising from the interaction between propagating optical and acoustic waves [1,2]. The high sensibility of SBS to external conditions allows to realize several applications such as slow light generation [3,4], ber ampliers and lasers [5,6], and distributed ber sensors [7]. Among the Brillouin based applications, Brillouin sensors have gained considerable interest due to their various and several usefulness and their interesting applications in civil structures as well as in smart devices [10,11].…”