We demonstrate coherent supercontinuum generation spanning over an octave from a silicon germanium-on-silicon waveguide using ∼ 200 f s pulses at a wavelength of 4 µm. The waveguide is engineered to provide low all-normal dispersion in the TM polarization. We validate the coherence of the generated supercontinuum via simulations, with a high degree of coherence across the entire spectrum. Such a generated supercontinuum could lend itself to pulse compression down to 22 fs.

We report a simple post-process technique that harnesses a hybrid chalcogenide/silicon-germanium system for the control of waveguide dispersion. By adding a chalcogenide top cladding to a SiGe/Si waveguide, we can substantially change the dispersive properties, which underpin the generation of a supercontinuum. In our particular example, we experimentally show that a shift from anomalous to normal dispersion takes place. We numerically study the dispersion dependence on the chalcogenide thickness and show how to use this additional degree of freedom to control the position of the zero dispersion wavelengths and hence the spectral span of the supercontinuum. Finally, we compare our approach with more traditional techniques that use geometry for dispersion tailoring.

Absorption spectroscopy based on supercontinuum generation in the mid-infrared is a powerful technique to analyze the chemical composition of samples. Furthermore, phase-coherent supercontinuum sources can enable fast data acquisition with coherent, stable pulses that allow single-shot measurements. We report here a numerical study of the coherence of an octavespanning mid-infrared supercontinuum source that was experimentally obtained in an air-clad SiGe/Si waveguide. We show that engineering two closely spaced zero-dispersion wavelengths that enclose an anomalous dispersion band centered around a fixed pump wavelength can produce supercontinuum pulses with high spectral density and full coherence at the extreme ends of the spectrum. This work is important for absorption spectroscopy, on-chip optical frequency metrology, and f-to-2f interferometry applications.

We experimentally demonstrate supercontinuum (SC) generation in a germanium-on-silicon waveguide. This waveguide exhibits propagation loss between 1.2 dB/cm and 1.35 dB/cm in the 3.6 µm–4.5 µm spectral region for both transverse electric (TE) and transverse magnetic (TM) polarizations. By pumping the waveguide with ∼200 fs pulses at 4.6 µm wavelength, we generate a mid-infrared (IR) SC spanning nearly an octave from 3.39 µm to 6.02 µm at the −40 dB level. Through numerical analysis of the evolution of the SC, we attribute the current limit to further extension into the mid-IR mainly to free-carrier absorption.