FWM Dynamics Under Dual-Pump Thermal Behavior in Silicon Microring Resonator

The silicon microring resonator is a superb platform for both fundamental studies and practical applications of various nonlinear optic phenomena. However, the highly enhanced light intensity in the ring cavity makes it quite sensitive to thermal variations and can in turn incur detrimental instability or degradation to the concurrent nonlinear processes. Here, we revisit the four-wave mixing effect in a silicon microring resonator by characterizing the detailed parametric dynamics under the influence of a dual-pump thermal behavior of the microring. We compare different pump scanning schemes and show that thermal variations of cavity modes can greatly impact the operation condition and efficiency of four-wave mixing. A synchronous pump scanning method is proposed and demonstrated to be the most applicable scheme to achieve high-efficiency parametric energy conversion in a thermally sensitive microring resonator.