Brillouin Scattering Self-Cancellation

The interaction between light and acoustic phonons is strongly modified in sub-wavelength confinement, and has led to the demonstration and control of Brillouin scattering in photonic structures such as nano-scale optical waveguides and cavities. Besides the small optical mode volume, two physical m...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2016-01
Main Authors: Florez, Omar, Jarschel, Paulo F, Yovanny A V Espinel, Cordeiro, Cristiano M B, Mayer Alegre, Thiago P, Wiederhecker, Gustavo S, Dainese, Paulo
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Elastic scattering
Elasticity
Nanowires
Optical waveguides
Perturbation
Phonons
Photonics
Refractivity
Silicon dioxide
Strain
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Summary:The interaction between light and acoustic phonons is strongly modified in sub-wavelength confinement, and has led to the demonstration and control of Brillouin scattering in photonic structures such as nano-scale optical waveguides and cavities. Besides the small optical mode volume, two physical mechanisms come into play simultaneously: a volume effect caused by the strain induced refractive index perturbation (known as photo-elasticity), and a surface effect caused by the shift of the optical boundaries due to mechanical vibrations. As a result proper material and structure engineering allows one to control each contribution individually. In this paper, we experimentally demonstrate the perfect cancellation of Brillouin scattering by engineering a silica nanowire with exactly opposing photo-elastic and moving-boundary effects. This demonstration provides clear experimental evidence that the interplay between the two mechanisms is a promising tool to precisely control the photon-phonon interaction, enhancing or suppressing it.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.1601.05248