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. 2023 Jun 30;9(26):eadg7841.
doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adg7841. Epub 2023 Jun 30.

Laser2: A two-domain photon-phonon laser

Ning Wang  1 , He Wen  1 , Juan Carlos Alvarado Zacarias  1 , Jose Enrique Antonio-Lopez  1 , Yuanhang Zhang  1 , Daniel Cruz Delgado  1 , Pierre Sillard  2 , Axel Schülzgen  1 , Bahaa E A Saleh  1 , Rodrigo Amezcua-Correa  1 , Guifang Li  1
Affiliations

Laser2: A two-domain photon-phonon laser

Ning Wang et al. Sci Adv. .

Abstract

The laser is one of the greatest inventions in history. Because of its ubiquitous applications and profound societal impact, the concept of the laser has been extended to other physical domains including phonon lasers and atom lasers. Quite often, a laser in one physical domain is pumped by energy in another. However, all lasers demonstrated so far have only lased in one physical domain. We have experimentally demonstrated simultaneous photon and phonon lasing in a two-mode silica fiber ring cavity via forward intermodal stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) mediated by long-lived flexural acoustic waves. This two-domain laser may find potential applications in optical/acoustic tweezers, optomechanical sensing, microwave generation, and quantum information processing. Furthermore, we believe that this demonstration will usher in other multidomain lasers and related applications.

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Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.. Operation principle of the two-domain fiber laser.
(A) Schematic of the two-domain (phonon and photon) laser based on forward intermodal SBS in a TMF ring cavity. Dispersion diagrams with energy and momentum conservation conditions for (B) backward SBS and (C) forward SBS in optical fiber. (D) Working principle of simultaneous phonon and phonon lasing illustrated in the frequency domain.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.. Experimental setup.
(A) Experimental setup for demonstrating two-domain, simultaneous phonon and photon lasing based on forward intermodal SBS in a 10-m TMF ring cavity. (B) Measured refractive index profile of the reduced-cladding TMF used as the gain media in the two-domain (phonon and photon) laser. (C) Microscope cross-sectional image of the TMF. (D) measured mode profiles of the three guided optical modes of the TMF at λ = 976 nm.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.. Experimental results.
(A) Measured optical power of the LP11 Stokes photon laser versus injected pump power, (inset) optical power in log scale. (B) RF power of the beat note between the pump and the Stokes photon laser at each pump power. (C) RF power in linear scale versus squared pump power and beat-note electrical spectra at a pump power of (D) 100 mW, (E) 161 mW, (F) 271 mW, and (G) 367 mW, color-matched to the circles in (A) and (B).
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