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Pulse compression by a refractive index front in periodically modulated silicon waveguide

Boyi Zhang1, Maurice Pfeiffer1, Mahmoud A. Gaafar1,2,3, He Li4, Xinlun Cai4, Juntao Li4,*, Manfred Eich1,5, and Alexander Yu. Petrov1,5,†

  • *Contact author: lijt3@mail.sysu.edu.cn
  • †Contact author: a.petrov@tuhh.de
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Phys. Rev. A 113, 013515 – Published 12 January, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/6x6w-p51w

Abstract

In this study, we report the experimental demonstration of optical pulse compression with a gradual refractive index front comoving in a periodically modulated silicon waveguide. This spatiotemporal effect, also called optical push broom, captures and confines the input signal pulse inside a faster propagating refractive index front, driven by a pump pulse. The signal is accelerated by the approaching front until its velocity matches the front's velocity, effectively stopping the light relative to the front. In contrast with the previous experiment where we used a cw signal, we now utilized a pulsed signal and thus can vary the initial delay between the signal and the pump. We employ the slowly varying envelope approximation to model the effect and successfully reproduce the experimental frequency shift at the output corresponding to the temporal delay at the input.

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Phys. Rev. A 113, 013515– Published 12 January, 2026
  • Received 18 February 2025
  • Accepted 21 November 2025
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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