Design of a hybrid on-chip waveguide with giant backward stimulated Brillouin scattering.

Abstract

On-chip waveguides on insulator with high stimulated Brillouin gain have wide potential application prospects in the field of nanophotonic structures. We propose a new on-chip hybrid silicon-chalcogenide slot waveguide structure consisting of a chalcogenide As2S3 rectangle core with an air slot and a wrapping layer of silicon. In the new hybrid waveguide, the high radiation pressure and electrostriction force, determined by pump and Stokes optical waves, and the acoustic displacement, determined by acoustic wave, can be achieved by adjusting the dimensions of rectangle core, the thickness of wrapping layers and the width of air slot. Therefore, a strong optomechanical coupling between high radiation pressure and transverse acoustic displacement will be generated. In such a way, a nonlinear gain for backward stimulated Brillouin scattering can be theoretically achieved with a high gain coefficient of 2.88×104 W-1m-1. The enhanced gain coefficient in the proposed waveguide is around 2.4 times as that in an on-chip silicon-chalcogenide hybrid slot waveguide on insulator without the wrapping layer. The Stokes amplification reaches 85.7 dB with the waveguide length of 2.5 cm. Therefore, this method provides a new idea to design nanophotonic waveguides for giant backward stimulated Brillouin scattering.