One amazing thing about silicon waveguides:  They can confine light into such small areas - on the scale of hundreds of nanometers - that the forces exerted by the light, as it couples between structures on-chip, can mechanically move these waveguides.  And, with the right design of the on-chip devices, these small motions can be read out interferometrically.  The first team to demonstrate this in silicon waveguides was a collaborative effort between Dr. Hochberg's group at UW, and Professor Hong Tang's group at Yale.