Estimation of acoustically induced refractive index perturbation in silicon and germanium slab for optical applications

Abstract

In-plane displacement field and refractive index variation for silicon and germanium in the presence of Lamb wave is estimated for optical applications. The required dispersion equation in a thin silicon and germanium plates is obtained using the method of potentials with boundary conditions involving the bulk and surface stress of the materials considered. The eigen-values thus obtained are used to compute the Lamb wave modes for the slab of silicon and germanium at same thickness. The fundamental anti-symmetric and symmetric plate modes and their overtones are observed due to confinement of acoustic energy within the slab thickness. In addition, the excited symmetric modes in silicon have longer wavelengths than those of germanium at a fixed frequency. Therefore, the refractive index modulation through the Lamb wave in silicon is always larger as compared to that of germanium. This refractive index modulation can be treated as periodic sinusoidal refractive index variation and may be considered as a tunable one-dimensional photonics crystal.