Mar 23 2016
A significantly large magnitude elasto-optic effect has been discovered in ferroelectrics, an unusual class of materials. The discovery of this large magnitude phenomenon has potential for a number of devices that could be used in optical systems.
Yurong Yang, University of Arkansas (Photo by Russell Cothren)
The discovery was made by a team of international physicists led by Yurong Yang, a research assistant professor at the University of Arkansas.The elasto-optic effect is characterized by the formation of a periodic variation in light refraction upon propagation of acoustic waves through optical materials, informed Yang.
We found a significantly large elasto-optic effect in thin films made of materials called ferroelectrics, which are usually considered for their changes in mechanical energy into electrical energy and vice versa, as well in multiferroelectric thin films, which are commonly investigated because of the possible control of their magnetic response by electric input, as well as of their electric response by magnetic input.
Yurong Yang, Research Assistant Professor, University of Arkansas
The study results have been reported in the American Physical Society’s journal, Physical Review Letters. The researchers have also described their research work in a second paper reported in Nature’s online journal, Nature Communications.
Those discoveries of a large elasto-optic effect in ferroelectrics and multiferroelectrics therefore broaden the potential of these materials since they can now be put in use to also control their optical responses by elastic property, which suggests exciting device opportunities arising from this overlooked coupling in these classes of materials.
Laurent Bellaiche, Distinguished Professor of Physics, University of Arkansas
Yang and Bellaiche are the holders of the Twenty-First Century Endowed Professorship in Nanotechnology and Science Education. The researchers carried out their work at the Institute for Nanoscience and Engineering and physics department at the U of A. They used the supercomputers at the Arkansas High Performance Computing Center and a U.S. Department of Defense supercomputing resource to perform calculations.
Zhigang Gui, a U of A physics graduate who is now a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Delaware; Lan Chen and X.K. Meng at Nanjing University in China, and Daniel Sando and Manuel Bibes at University of Paris-Sud in France were the other researchers contributed to obtain the results presented in the Physical Review Letters paper.
In addition to Daniel Sando and Manuel Bibes, Cecile Carretero, Vincent Garcia, Stephane Fusil and Agnes Barthelemy at the University of Paris-Sud; Eric Bousquet and Philippe Ghosez at the University of Liege in Belgium; and Daniel Dolfi of Thales Research and Technology in France contributed to the results reported in the Nature Communications paper.