Coherently refreshing hypersonic phonons for light storage

Birgit Stiller*, Moritz Merklein, Christian Wolff, Khu Vu, Pan Ma, Stephen J. Madden, Benjamin J. Eggleton

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    44 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Acoustic waves can serve as memory for optical information; however, propagating acoustic phonons in the gigahertz (GHz) regime decay on the nanosecond time scale. 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. We experimentally demonstrate coherent on-chip storage in amplitude and phase up to 40 ns, 4 times the intrinsic acoustic lifetime in the waveguide. 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.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)492-497
    Number of pages6
    JournalOptica
    Volume7
    Issue number5
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 25 May 2020

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