Plasmonic waveguide design for the enhanced forward stimulated brillouin scattering in diamond

Abstract

We propose a scheme of metal/dielectric/metal waveguide for the enhanced forward stimulated Brillouin scattering (FSBS) in diamond that is mediated by gap surface plasmons. Numerical results based on finite-element method show that the maximum Brillouin gain in the small gap (~100 nm) can exceed 106 W-1 m-1, which is three orders of magnitude higher than that in diamond-only waveguides. It is found that the radiation pressure that exists at the boundaries of metal and diamond plays a dominant role in contributing to the enhanced forward stimulated Brillouin gain, although electrostrictive forces interfere destructively. Detailed study shows that high FSBS gain can still be obtained regardless of the photoelastic property of the dielectric material in the proposed plasmonic waveguide. The strong photon-phonon coupling in this gap-surface-plasmon waveguide may make our design useful in the development of phonon laser, RF wave generation and optomechanical information processing in quantum system.