- A BYU researcher was part of a team that used a silicon chip to reduce the speed of light by a factor of 1,200.
- That's the slowest light propagation on a chip, ever.
- Controlling light on a chip is an important part of the next generation of computer systems, which will use light, rather than electricity, to transmit information.
A tiny optical device built into a silicon chip has achieved the slowest light propagation on a chip to date, reducing the speed of light by a factor of 1,200 in a study reported in Nature Photonics (published online September 5 and in the November print issue).
The ability to control light pulses on an integrated chip-based platform is a major step toward the realization of all-optical quantum communication networks, with potentially vast improvements in ultra-low-power performance. Aaron Hawkins, Brigham Young University electrical engineering professor, was part of the team that developed the new device.
“Producing sophisticated optical phenomenon like slow light usually requires large optical tables and expensive components,” said Hawkins. “We are squeezing all that down to the size of a computer chip – and discovering new physics in the process.”
Whereas optical fibers routinely transmit data at light speed, routing and data processing operations still require converting light signals to electronic signals. All-optical data processing will require compact, reliable devices that can slow, store, and process light pulses.
The research team was led by Holger Schmidt, professor of electrical engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an associate of Hawkins’ from graduate school days.
"The simplest example of how slow light can be used is to provide a data buffer or tunable signal delay in an optical network, but we are looking beyond that with our integrated photonic chip," Schmidt said.
The device relies on quantum interference effects in a rubidium vapor inside a hollow-core optical waveguide that is built into a silicon chip using standard manufacturing techniques.
Several different techniques have been used to slow light to a crawl and even bring it to a complete halt for a few hundredths of a millisecond. Previously, however, systems based on quantum interference required low temperatures or laboratory setups too elaborate for practical use. In 2008, researchers at NTT Laboratories in Japan developed a specially structured silicon chip that could slow light pulses by a factor of 170. Called a photonic crystal waveguide, it has advantages for certain applications, but it does not produce the quantum effects of the atomic spectroscopy chip developed by Schmidt's group.
Those quantum effects produce not only slow light but other interactions between light and matter that raise the possibility of radically new optical devices for quantum computing and quantum communication systems, according to Schmidt. In addition, the system makes it easy to turn the effect on and off and tune it to the desired speed of light.
"By changing the power of a control laser, we can change the speed of light--just by turning the power control knob," he said.
The control laser modifies the optical properties of the rubidium vapor in the hollow-core waveguide. Under the combined action of two laser fields (control and signal), electrons in the rubidium atoms are transferred into a coherent superposition of two quantum states. In the strange world of quantum physics, they exist in two different states at the same time. One result is an effect known as electromagnetically induced transparency, which is key to producing slow light.
"Normally, the rubidium vapor absorbs the light from the signal laser, so nothing gets through. Then you turn on the control laser and boom, the material becomes transparent and the signal pulse not only makes it through, but it also moves significantly more slowly," Schmidt said.
This study is the first demonstration of electromagnetically induced transparency and slow light on a fully self-contained atomic spectroscopy chip.
"This has implications for looking at nonlinear optical effects beyond slow light," Schmidt said. "We can potentially use this to create all-optical switches, single-photon detectors, quantum memory devices, and other exciting possibilities."
The first author of the new paper is Bin Wu, a graduate student in electrical engineering at UCSC. Other coauthors include John Hulbert, Evan Lunt, and Katie Hurd.
(This article is adapted from a UC-Santa Cruz news release, used with permission).
Writer: Tim Stephens
