Mid-infrared optical parametric amplifier using silicon nanophotonic waveguides

All-optical signal processing is envisioned as an approach to dramatically decrease power consumption and speed up performance of next-generation optical telecommunications networks. Nonlinear optical effects, such as four-wave mixing (FWM) and parametric gain, have long been explored to realize all-optical functions in glass fibers. An alternative approach is to employ nanoscale engineering of silicon waveguides to enhance the optical nonlinearities by up to five orders of magnitude, enabling integrated chip-scale all-optical signal processing. Previously, strong two-photon absorption (TPA) of the telecom-band pump has been a fundamental and unavoidable obstacle, limiting parametric gain to values on the order of a few dB. Here we demonstrate a silicon nanophotonic optical parametric amplifier exhibiting gain as large as 25.4 dB, by operating the pump in the mid-IR near one-half the band-gap energy (E~0.55eV, lambda~2200nm), at which parasitic TPA-related absorption vanishes. This gain is high enough to compensate all insertion losses, resulting in 13 dB net off-chip amplification. Furthermore, dispersion engineering dramatically increases the gain bandwidth to more than 220 nm, all realized using an ultra-compact 4 mm silicon chip. Beyond its significant relevance to all-optical signal processing, the broadband parametric gain also facilitates the simultaneous generation of multiple on-chip mid-IR sources through cascaded FWM, covering a 500 nm spectral range. Together, these results provide a foundation for the construction of silicon-based room-temperature mid-IR light sources including tunable chip-scale parametric oscillators, optical frequency combs, and supercontinuum generators

Active dielectric antenna on chip for spatial light modulation

Integrated photonic resonators are widely used to manipulate light propagation in an evanescently-coupled waveguide. While the evanescent coupling scheme works well for planar optical systems that are naturally waveguide based, many optical applications are free-space based, such as imaging, display, holographics, metrology and remote sensing. Here we demonstrate an active dielectric antenna as the interface device that allows the large-scale integration capability of silicon photonics to serve the free-space applications. We show a novel perturbation-base diffractive coupling scheme that allows a high-Q planer resonator to directly interact with and manipulate free-space waves. Using a silicon-based photonic crystal cavity whose resonance can be rapidly tuned with a p-i-n junction, a compact spatial light modulator with an extinction ratio of 9.5 dB and a modulation speed of 150 MHz is demonstrated. Method to improve the modulation speed is discussed.Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR grant FA9550-12-1-0261

Silicon optical modulators

Optical technology is poised to revolutionize short-reach interconnects. The leading candidate technology is silicon photonics, and the workhorse of such an interconnect is the optical modulator. Modulators have been improved dramatically in recent years, with a notable increase in bandwidth from the megahertz to the multigigahertz regime in just over half a decade. However, the demands of optical interconnects are significant, and many questions remain unanswered as to whether silicon can meet the required performance metrics. Minimizing metrics such as the device footprint and energy requirement per bit, while also maximizing bandwidth and modulation depth, is non-trivial. All of this must be achieved within an acceptable thermal tolerance and optical spectral width using CMOS-compatible fabrication processes. This Review discusses the techniques that have been (and will continue to be) used to implement silicon optical modulators, as well as providing an outlook for these devices and the candidate solutions of the future

Observation of type-I and type-II excitons in strained Si/SiGe quantum-well structures

The authors report photoluminescence (PL) measurement on a series of SiSiGe quantum-well structures that had different internal strain distributions. When each sample was placed in a high magnetic field, the field-dependent energy shift of the relevant PL peaks revealed either type-I or type-II exciton formation depending on the strain distribution. This observation is in agreement with theoretical modeling. The present investigation shows that type-I band alignment-desired for electroluminescent devices-can be achieved by strain engineering. © 2007 American Institute of Physics