Efficient Brillouin Optomechanical Interaction Assisted by Piezomechanics on the SOI Platform

Abstract

A hybrid silicon/aluminum nitride waveguide on the silicon-on-insulator platform is proposed to achieve an efficient Brillouin optomechanical interaction. Both intra-optical-mode and inter-optical-mode Brillouin scattering can be achieved. The novel arrangement of symmetric electrodes provides out-of-plane electric fields for piezoelectric materials and the possibility of suspended waveguides and cavities. The piezomechanical interaction coupling strength and the Brillouin optomechanical interaction coupling strength are numerically calculated. The simulation results show that near-unity internal conversion efficiency from the microwave domain to the optical domain can be achieved. Relatively low microwave power can be used to produced up to 5 order sidebands acousto-optical modulation. The proposed scheme paves the way for efficient classical and quantum application in integrated silicon photonics.

Keywords

• Optomechanics
• photon-phonon interaction
• Brillouin scattering
• integrated silicon photonics