Kuyken, Bart

Ghent University Academic Bibliography

Nonlinear optics in silicon wire waveguides:towards integrated long-wavelength light sourcesBart KuykenDepartment of Information Technology, Ghent UniversitySupervisor(s): Roel Baets, Gunther RoelkensDetecting small traces of pollutants in the air or analyzing blood samples has been done exten-sively by using light. In such a spectroscopic approach, a broadband or tunable light source revealsthe absorption features of molecules which need to be detected in a sample. Strong absorptionfeatures of many molecules can be found in the so called mid-infrared region as shown in Fig1. State-of-the-art mid-infrared spectroscopic systems use free space optics and expensive, bulkylight sources. This has limited the enormous potential of mid-infrared spectroscopy to only a fewsets of applications in a laboratory environment.However by using integrated optics where on-chip lightwave circuits are used to guide and filterlight, these systems could be fit on a chip measuring only a few square mm, unlocking the throughpotential of this wavelength region. Indeed it has been shown that silicon chips can be used to guidelight, split and filter light. The use of silicon chips has many advantages not the least because such?photonic? silicon chips are fabricated with the same equipment as used for the mass fabricationof electronic silicon chips. However, the generation of light itself in these silicon chips remains alarge challenge. In this research is shown that by using nonlinear optics, mid-infrared light can begenerated on such a chip. An on-chip broadband light source is demonstrated as well as a tunablewavelength source based on a silicon chip, both operating in the mid-infrared. This is a major steptowards the realization of chip-scale spectroscopic systems.—————————————————–B. Kuyken acknowledges the Flemish Research Foundation, Vlaanderen for a doctoral fellowship. This workwas partly carried out in the framework of the Methusalem ?Smart Photonic Chips,? FP7-ERC-INSPECTRAand FP7-ERC-MIRACLE.

Nonlinear optics in silicon wire waveguides: towards integrated long-wavelength light sources

https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/2036767/file/2038622.pdf

Nonlinear optics in silicon wire waveguides: towards integrated long-wavelength light sources

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Ghent University Academic Bibliography