On-Chip Octave-Spanning Supercontinuum in Nanostructured Silicon Waveguides Using Ultralow Pulse Energy

Author

Zhang, Lin ; Lin, Qiang ; Yue, Yang ; Yan, Yan ; Beausoleil, Raymond G. ; Agarwal, Anu ; Kimerling, Lionel C. ; Michel, Jurgen ; Willner, Alan E.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., Univ. of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Volume

18

Issue

6

fYear

2012

Firstpage

1799

Lastpage

1806

Abstract

We present an approach for generating an octave-spanning supercontinuum on a silicon chip using input pulse energy as low as 6.8 pJ. This is enabled by advanced dispersion engineering with a nanoscale slot structure. We analyze the performance of the supercontinuum generation in terms of bandwidth, spectral coherence, and flatness, under different operating conditions. We show that, accompanying with the spectral broadening, the input pulse is compressed to 12 fs, which opens an opportunity for on-chip few-cycle pulse generation.

Keywords

elemental semiconductors; light coherence; nanophotonics; nanostructured materials; optical dispersion; optical pulse compression; optical waveguides; silicon; spectral line broadening; supercontinuum generation; Si; advanced dispersion engineering; input pulse energy; nanoscale slot structure; nanostructured silicon waveguides; on-chip few-cycle pulse generation; on-chip octave-spanning supercontinuum generations; silicon chip; spectral broadening; spectral coherence; ultralow pulse energy; Bandwidth; Coherence; Dispersion; Optical waveguides; Silicon; Supercontinuum generation; Dispersion; integrated optics; pulse compression; silicon photonics; slot waveguide; supercontinuum;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics, IEEE Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1077-260X

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JSTQE.2012.2200032

Filename

6202318