Acousto-optic coupling in phoxonic crystal nanobeam cavities with plasmonic behavior

Acousto-optic (AO) coupling in a two-layer GaAs/Ag heterogeneous phoxonic crystal nanobeam cavity with plasmonic behavior is studied numerically. Because of the Ag metal layer, the cavity structure hybridizes photons and surface plasmons, squeezing the optical energy into small regions near the GaAs/Ag interface; the phononic cavity modes can be simultaneously tailored to highly match the photonic cavity modes at reduced regions in the cavity. Consequently, AO coupling is enhanced at near-infrared wavelengths. Boosting of the interface effect by the acoustic displacement field mainly contributes to the AO coupling enhancement. The simultaneous small photonic mode volume and high spatial matching of photonic and phononic cavity modes enhance the photonic resonance wavelength shift by one order of magnitude. This study enables applications of strong AO or photon-phonon interaction in subwavelength nano-structures.