Northern Arizona University (NAU; Flagstaff, AZ) assistant professor Ryan Behunin collaborated with a team of physicists from Yale and the University of Texas at Austin in discovering an innovative way to manipulate light in silicon. By demonstrating a new type of laser that amplifies light with sound waves in a silicon chip, the team’s research represents a significant advance in the field of silicon photonics, as described in Science.
Realizing the full potential of silicon photonics has challenged scientists for decades. Due to the element's intrinsic properties, it is extremely difficult to generate laser light in silicon—a key ingredient for silicon photonics. With these findings, the team has taken a big step toward solving that problem.
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"We demonstrated a new type of laser, the Brillouin laser, in silicon," Behunin said. "This project dramatically expanded the way light can be manipulated and controlled within silicon. The laser is named for French physicist Léon Brillouin, for whom the effect of light-sound scattering is also named. By designing a new, specialized waveguide, the team's Brillouin laser uses sound to amplify light.
The laser's unique properties may enable applications ranging from timekeeping to new schemes for encoding and decoding information. The Brillouin laser can produce pure sound waves, in addition to emitting light. The emitted light can be used to power "photonic circuits," and the sound waves can be harnessed to carry out very sophisticated forms of precision sensing--all possible on a small chip.
"We've only scratched the surface with this work," Behunin said. "Using silicon, we can create a range of laser designs, each with unique properties customized for a specific application."
SOURCE: NAU; http://news.nau.edu/behunin-brillouin-laser/
