Wavelength-agile near-IR optical parametric oscillator using a deposited silicon waveguide

Abstract

Using a deposited hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) waveguide, we demonstrate ultra-broad bandwidth (60 THz) parametric amplification via four-wave mixing (FWM), and subsequently achieve the first silicon optical parametric oscillator (OPO) at near-IR wavelengths. Utilization of the time-dispersion-tuned technique provides an optical source with active wavelength tuning over 42 THz with a fixed pump wave.

Nonlinear optical interactions in silicon waveguides

“…The output power as a function of the wavelength is shown in Figure 25. Interestingly, due to the favorable nonlinear properties of hydrogenated amorphous silicon also widely tunable OPOs have been demonstrated using a-Si:H [67]. …”

Optical parametric oscillator based on silicon nitride waveguides

“…1(b), reveals a 35 dB enhancement of the power spectral density (PSD). The presented Si 3 N 4 WOPO showed a higher threshold energy of 3.5 nJ due to the lower nonlinearity compared to a silicon-based WOPO with a picojoule-level threshold [3]. However, lower losses allow should for a complete integration of the resonator on the chip in silicon nitride [4].…”

“…However, integrated waveguides offer in contrast to photonic crystal fibers a higher nonlinearity resulting in lower necessary pump energies and shorter interaction lengths [2]. Therefore, OPOs would require smaller footprints on a chip with additionally improved stability [3]. Here, we present a waveguide-based OPO (WOPO) exploiting four-wave mixing (FWM) in silicon nitride (Si 3 N 4 ) waveguides, with the potential to be fully integrated.…”

The influence of thermal and free carrier dispersion effects on all-optical wavelength conversion in a silicon racetrack-shaped microring resonator

“…Many silicon optical devices based on the Raman [2,3] and Kerr effects [4,5] have been demonstrated in silicon nanowaveguides. In particular, the four-wave mixing (FWM) effect in silicon nanowaveguides has attracted much research attention because of its wide applications in all-optical processing, including optical parametric amplification [6][7][8], optical parametric oscillators [9,10], wavelength conversion [11][12][13][14][15][16][17], signal regeneration [18], and even correlated photon pair generation [19]. However, the conversion efficiency of FWM in silicon nanowaveguides is limited by the strong nonlinear absorption induced by two-photon absorption (TPA) and free carrier absorption (FCA) [12].…”