Laser²: A two-domain photon-phonon laser

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.