Electrical driving of X-band mechanical waves in a silicon photonic circuit

• Main Authors: Raphaël Van Laer, Rishi N. Patel, Timothy P. McKenna, Jeremy D. Witmer, Amir H. Safavi-Naeini
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: AIP Publishing LLC 2018-08-01
• Series: APL Photonics
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.5042428

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.