Abstract
Reducing energy dissipation is a central goal of classical and quantum technologies. Optics achieved great success in bringing down power consumption of long-distance communication links. With the rise of mobile, quantum, and cloud technologies, it is essential to extend this success to shorter links. Electro-optic modulators are a crucial contributor of dissipation in such links. Numerous variations on important mechanisms such as free-carrier modulation and the Pockels effect are currently pursued, but there are few investigations of mechanical motion as an electro-optic mechanism in silicon. In this work, we demonstrate electrical driving and optical read-out of a 7.2 GHz mechanical mode of a silicon photonic waveguide. The electrical driving is capacitive and can be implemented in any material system. The measurements show that the mechanically mediated optical phase modulation is two orders of magnitude more efficient than the background phase modulation in our system. Our demonstration is an important step toward efficient opto-electro-mechanical devices in a scalable photonic platform.
Highlights
Dissipated energy limits our ability to transmit and process information
Optics plays an essential role in reducing this energy, enabling the long-distance communication links that underpin today’s communication networks
Research efforts across the globe envision transferring this success to shorter links inside data centers, on circuit boards, and perhaps on individual chips.[1]
Summary
Dissipated energy limits our ability to transmit and process information. Optics plays an essential role in reducing this energy, enabling the long-distance communication links that underpin today’s communication networks. It is the same mode that has recently been studied in the context of Brillouin scattering and optomechanics.[31,32,33] Our work is closely related to current electro-optic efforts that harness the third-order Kerr effect in silicon.[8,34,35] In those studies, a constant bias field converts the third-order Kerr effect to an effective secondorder Pockels effect. The bias field breaks the inversion symmetry of silicon and leads to effective piezoelectricity, enabling direct conversion between microwave photons and phonons These phonons subsequently generate optical sidebands via silicon’s strong photoelasticity.[31,32]
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