Compact optical temporal differentiator based on silicon microring resonator

Abstract

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a temporal differentiator in optical field based on a silicon microring resonator with a radius of 40 microm. The microring resonator operates near the critical coupling region, and can take the first order derivative of the optical field. It features compact size thus is suitable for integration with silicon-on-insulator (SOI) based optical and electronic devices. The performance of this optical differentiator is tested using signals with typical shapes such as Gaussian, sinusoidal and square-like pulses at data rates of 10 Gb/s and 5 Gb/s.

Reconfigurable broadband microwave photonic intensity differentiator based on an integrated optical frequency comb source

“…Our CMOS compatible fabrication process makes our differentiators comparable, in terms of fabrication maturity, to those implemented by means of optoelectronics silicon devices. [13][14][15][16][17] In particular, we note that, due to the ultra-low loss of our platform, the ring resonator has a quality factor of ∼1.2 × 10 6 . Our device architecture uses a vertical coupling scheme where the gap can be controlled via film growth-a more accurate approach than lithographic techniques.…”

“…(2) are intensity differentiators for baseband RF input signals, i.e., the combined output RF signal after detection yields an exact differentiation of the input RF signal, in contrast to field differentiators that yield the derivative of a complex optical field. 8,10,[12][13][14][15][16][17] We note that while optical field differentiators can be used to directly operate on microwave photonic signals, our approach has important advantages. When an RF signal is modulated onto an optical carrier, the intensity of the optical carrier is proportional to the square of the RF field.…”

“…[8][9][10] To implement photonic differentiators, a number of schemes have been proposed, which can be classified into two categories, namely, field differentiators and intensity differentiators. 11 Field differentiators based on apodized fibre Bragg gratings 8,10,12 and integrated silicon photonic devices [13][14][15][16][17] have recently been demonstrated. These types of devices yield the derivative of a complex optical field and have the ability to shape ultra-short optical pulses that could find applications in optical pulse generation and advanced coding.…”

Invited Article: Electrically tunable silicon-based on-chip microdisk resonator for integrated microwave photonic applications

“…4 For example, an MRR has been used to realize a photonic temporal differentiator. 5 An MRR or multiple cascaded MRRs have also been used as an integrated optical delay line. 6,7 By incorporating a PN junction in the waveguide of an MRR, a high-speed MRR-based electro-optic modulator has been demonstrated 8 and employed for the implementation of a photonic temporal differentiator with a a Electronic mail: jpyao@eecs.uottawa.ca.…”

Design of all-optical temporal dif ferentiator using a Moire fiber grating

“…The incoherent optical differentiator operates on the optical intensity, instead of the field complex profile, of an initial optical signal. Many methods have been proposed to realize the coherent optical differentiator, including the use of silicon micro ring resonator [10] , long-period fiber grating (LPFG) [11,12] , and optical interferometer [13] . The silicon micro ring resonator can offer an operational bandwidth in the tens of gigahertzs [10] , whereas the experimentally proven differentiator based on LPFG offers operational bandwidth up to many terahertzs.…”