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Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics Europe & European Quantum Electronics Conference (CLEO/Europe-EQEC)

Refreshed Opto-Acoustic Memory

Birgit Stiller, Moritz Merklein, Khu T. Vu, Pan Ma, Steve Madden, Benjamin J. Eggleton

Published Jun 1, 2019• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Storing and delaying optical information is of crucial importance for optical communications, signal processing and in the quantum domain. A plethora of techniques for optical storage have been shown which aim to maintain as much as possible the advantages of optics, such as e.g. the coherence, the bandwidth and capacity. In particular the interaction of optical waves with mechanical motion offers a solution to buffer optical information [1-4]. It was shown that one can use acoustic waves to store and delay optical signals coherently via the effect of stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) [3,4]. This allows for simultaneous storage at multiple wavelengths [5], cascaded storage at different spatial positions [6], and nonreciprocal storage with a GHz bandwidth [7]. However, the delay time of this technique is so far limited to the acoustic lifetime of about 10 ns.

DOI
10.1109/cleoe-eqec.2019.8873194

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Storing and delaying optical information is of crucial importance for optical communications, signal processing and in the quantum domain. A plethora of techniques for optical storage have been shown which aim to maintain as much as possible the advantages of optics, such as e.g. the coherence, the bandwidth and capacity. In particular the interaction of optical waves with mechanical motion offers a solution to buffer optical information [1-4]. It was shown that one can use acoustic waves to store and delay optical signals coherently via the effect of stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) [3,4]. This allows for simultaneous storage at multiple wavelengths [5], cascaded storage at different spatial positions [6], and nonreciprocal storage with a GHz bandwidth [7]. However, the delay time of this technique is so far limited to the acoustic lifetime of about 10 ns.
Optical and acoustic waves can interact over the nonlinear effect of stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS), which is a coherent process. By using traveling acoustic waves, we recently showed proof-of-principle experiments of Brillouin-based light storage. The particularity of Brillouin-based light storage is the strict phase-matching condition. This allows for different features: simultaneous storage at multiple wavelengths, cascaded storage at different spatial positions, and nonreciprocal storage with a GHz bandwidth. However, the delay time of this technique has so far been limited to the acoustic lifetime of about 10 ns. In this talk, I will discuss our recent results on coherent photon-phonon interaction. One focus will be on a proof-of-principle experiments on how to reinforce acoustic phonons. This enables us to overcome the obstacle of the limited acoustic lifetime by optically reinforcing the acoustic wave.
In order to deliberately control the flow of optically encoded information, optical storage is an indispensable tool, but it must maintain all the advantages of optics, such as i.e. the coherence, the bandwidth and capacity. An elegant approach to this problem is to coherently transfer the information from optical to acoustic waves via an opto-mechanical nonlinearity, such as stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS). The basic concept was first demonstrated in highly nonlinear fiber by Zhu et al. [1]. Recently, we experimentally demonstrated the coherence of this memory concept by encoding different amplitude and phase levels in an integrated photonic circuit [2] and the compatibility with wavelength division multiplexing [3]. This concept is based on a straight waveguide without the need of a structural resonance as an opto-mechanical resonator or a photonic crystal cavity. Therefore, the memory operation can be arbitrarily positioned on the photonic chip and can even be repeated and cascaded several times, via external control light pulses.
The importance of optical signal processing techniques is growing rapidly in recent years due to the exponentially increasing demand for bandwidth, capacity and power efficiency in communications and computing. However, due to their bosonic nature photons do not interact with each other, unless there is a nonlinear medium mediating the interaction. One of the strongest nonlinear effects is the interaction of light waves, photons, with sound-waves, acoustic phonons, which is known as stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS). This thesis experimentally investigates SBS in photonic chips. It is shown in this thesis that the fundamental interaction strength between light and sound waves can be tailored by using one-dimensional photonic bandgap structures, completely suppressing the effect or alternatively enhancing the interaction to form phase-locked Brillouin frequency combs. It was shown furthermore that efficiently generating SBS on-chip enables the generation of stable RF signals that are widely tunable in frequency. Finally, it is shown in this thesis that SBS enables the storage of light signals on a chip, one of the holy grails of all-optical signal processing. Delaying optical signals is of key importance in optical networks to enable synchronization, buffering, and rerouting. SBS enables large delays by resonantly transferring an optical signal to an acoustic wave, that travels five orders of magnitude slower and retrieving it after a certain storage time. It is demonstrated in this thesis that a Brillouin-based memory (BBM) technique allows storing amplitude and phase of optical data pulses and operate at multiple wavelengths with minimal cross-talk. Replenishing of the acoustic wave to overcome storage time limitations imposed by the lifetime of the acoustic wave as well as non-reciprocal light storage is also shown.
Stimulated Brillouin scattering describes a way to excite coherent acoustic phonons solely by optically forces in integrated waveguides. It was shown recently that one can use these acoustic phonons to store and delay optical signals [1], [2]. The optical information is resonantly transferred to a coherent acoustic phonon and is then transferred back to the optical domain by a delayed optical retrieval pulse. The storage time, however, is so far limited to a few nanoseconds, determined by the lifetime of the acoustic phonon. A delay of several nanoseconds might be enough for delaying some high speed signals, however increasing the delay time beyond the acoustic lifetime would enable new possibilities for phonon-based on-chip optical signal processing.
Abstract Storing or delaying optical signals is of key interest for fundamental research and applications in radar, microwave signal processing, quantum information as well as optical communication systems. Delay systems based on stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS), a coherent interaction between optical and acoustic waves can be implemented in optical fiber or chip-scale platforms, operate at room temperature and can be fully controlled via the optical pump wave. In this article, we review delay and storage techniques based on SBS. We present SBS slow-light, fiber delay lines based on Brillouin dynamic gratings, Brillouin quasi-light storage and Brillouin-based light storage via photon-phonon conversion and compare their performance. In this process, we also include an overview of different platforms used for Brillouin light storage and delay schemes, such as optical fiber, planar soft-glass waveguides, and silica fiber-tip resonators.
Acoustic waves can serve as memory for optical information, however, acoustic phonons in the GHz regime decay on the nanosecond timescale. Usually this is dominated by intrinsic acoustic loss due to inelastic scattering of the acoustic waves and thermal phonons. Here we show a way to counteract the intrinsic acoustic decay of the phonons in a waveguide by resonantly reinforcing the acoustic wave via synchronized optical pulses. This scheme overcomes the previous constraints of phonon-based optical signal processing for light storage and memory. We experimentally demonstrate on-chip storage up to 40 ns, four times the intrinsic acoustic lifetime in the waveguide. We confirm the coherence of the scheme by detecting the phase of the delayed optical signal after 40 ns using homodyne detection. Through theoretical considerations we anticipate that this concept allows for storage times up to microseconds within realistic experimental limitations while maintaining a GHz bandwidth of the optical signal. The refreshed phonon-based light storage removes the usual bandwidth-delay product limitations of e.g. slow-light schemes.