Highly nonlinear silicon photonics slot waveguides without free carrier absorption related speed-limitations

Nonlinear losses of highly nonlinear silicon/organic photonics slot waveguides are analyzed. Unlike silicon strip waveguides, slot waveguides do not show absorption related speed limitations up to highest input powers

All-optical high-speed signal processing with silicon-organic hybrid slot waveguidesx

Integrated optical circuits based on silicon-on-insulator technology are likely to become the mainstay of the photonics industry. Over recent years an impressive range of silicon-on-insulator devices has been realized, including waveguides(1,2), filters(3,4) and photonic-crystal devices(5). However, silicon-based all-optical switching is still challenging owing to the slow dynamics of two-photon generated free carriers. Here we show that silicon-organic hybrid integration overcomes such intrinsic limitations by combining the best of two worlds, using mature CMOS processing to fabricate the waveguide, and molecular beam deposition to cover it with organic molecules that efficiently mediate all-optical interaction without introducing significant absorption. We fabricate a 4-mm-long silicon-organic hybrid waveguide with a record nonlinearity coefficient of gamma approximate to 1 x 10(5) W-1 km(-1) and perform all-optical demultiplexing of 170.8 Gb s(-1) to 42.7 Gb s(-1). This is-to the best of our knowledge-the fastest silicon photonic optical signal processing demonstrated

Silicon-organic hybrid (SOH) devices for nonlinear optical signal processing

Silicon-on-insulator (SOI) is a promising material system for dense on-chip integration of both silicon photonic and electronic devices. The high refractive index of silicon enables strong light confinement and compact low-loss devices at telecommunication wavelengths. In addition, on-chip nonlinear optical signal processing becomes feasible, because the third-order nonlinear susceptibility chi((3)) of silicon is about 200 times that of glass, and because the tight light confinement enhances the nonlinear response. However, for many applications it would be desirable to have even stronger nonlinearities, and to exploit second-order chi((2))-nonlinearities which are negligibly small in mono-crystalline silicon. On the other hand, many organic materials are highly nonlinear, but have only a low refractive index. Silicon-organic hybrid (SOH) systems combine the strengths of both materials resultingg in extremely large effective nonlinearities. We report on the design of a 100 Gbit/s / 1 V modulator based on an 80 mu m long slow-light SOI photonic crystal slot waveguide filled with a chi((2))-nonlinear organic material. Further, we demonstrate demultiplexing of a 120 Gbit/s signal to 10 Gbit/s with four-wave mixing in a 6 mm long SOI slot waveguide, on which an organic highly chi((3))-nonlinear material was deposited with a molecular beam