@article{7457904ca92745ec99defda8993fd851,
title = "Backscatter-Immune Injection-Locked Brillouin Laser in Silicon",
abstract = "As self-sustained oscillators, lasers possess the unusual ability to spontaneously synchronize. These nonlinear dynamics are the basis for a simple yet powerful stabilization technique known as injection locking, in which a laser's frequency and phase can be controlled by an injected signal. Because of its inherent simplicity and favorable noise characteristics, injection locking has become a workhorse for coherent amplification and high-fidelity signal synthesis in applications ranging from precision atomic spectroscopy to distributed sensing. Within integrated photonics, however, these injection-locking dynamics remain relatively untapped - despite significant potential for technological and scientific impact. Here, we demonstrate injection locking in a silicon photonic Brillouin laser. Injection locking of this monolithic device is remarkably robust, allowing us to tune the laser emission by a significant fraction of the Brillouin gain bandwidth. Harnessing these dynamics, we demonstrate amplification of small signals by more than 23 dB. Moreover, we demonstrate that the injection-locking dynamics of this system are inherently nonreciprocal, yielding unidirectional control and backscatter immunity in an all-silicon system. This device physics opens the door to strategies for phase-noise reduction, low-noise amplification, and backscatter immunity in silicon photonics.",
author = "Otterstrom, {Nils T.} and Shai Gertler and Yishu Zhou and Kittlaus, {Eric A.} and Behunin, {Ryan O.} and Michael Gehl and Starbuck, {Andrew L.} and Dallo, {Christina M.} and Pomerene, {Andrew T.} and Trotter, {Douglas C.} and Lentine, {Anthony L.} and Rakich, {Peter T.}",
note = "Funding Information: This material is based upon work supported by the Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering, the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. DGE1122492 (N.T.O.), and the Laboratory Directed Research and Development program at Sandia National Laboratories. Sandia National Laboratories is a multiprogram laboratory managed and operated by the National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International, Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy{\textquoteright}s National Nuclear Security Administration under Contract No. DE-NA-0003525. Part of the research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This paper describes objective technical results and analysis. Any subjective views or opinions that might be expressed in the paper do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or the United States Government. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2020 American Physical Society. ",
year = "2020",
month = oct,
day = "22",
doi = "10.1103/PhysRevApplied.14.044042",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "14",
journal = "Physical Review Applied",
issn = "2331-7019",
publisher = "American Physical Society",
number = "4",
}