Hamburg 2001 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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HL: Halbleiterphysik

HL 21: Photonische Kristalle

HL 21.7: Vortrag

Dienstag, 27. März 2001, 17:00–17:15, S9/10

Dynamic Modulation of Photonic Crystals by Surface Acoustic Waves — •Matthias Wassermeier and Paolo Santos — Paul Drude Institut, Hausvogteiplatz 5-7, 10117 Berlin

The dynamic modulation of photonic crystals provides an effective mechanism to achieve active control of light propagation in photonic crystals. In this contribution, we investigate the realization of such an active control by employing a surface acoustic wave (SAW) to modulate a two-dimensional photonic crystal. In that way, the energy and propagation direction of light beams in the photonic material can be controled by varying the SAW frequency. The SAW leads to new light scattering mechanisms based on umklapp processes [P. St. J. Russell, Phys. Rev. Lett. 56, 596 (1986)], which can improve the efficiency of SAW-based light modulators. In particular, we demonstrate that scattering geometries with collinear propagation paths for the SAW and the light beam become possible using SAW wavelengths much larger than the light wavelength. We analyze the performance of modulators and tunable light filtes based on this principle, and examine the role of random fluctuations in the dimensions of the photonic structures on their operation.