Dispersive wave emission and supercontinuum generation in a silicon wire waveguide pumped around the 1550  nm telecommunication wavelength

Abstract

We experimentally and numerically study dispersive wave emission, soliton fission, and supercontinuum generation in a silicon wire at telecommunication wavelengths. Through dispersion engineering, we experimentally confirm a previously reported numerical study and show that the emission of resonant radiation from the solitons can lead to the generation of a supercontinuum spanning over 500 nm. An excellent agreement with numerical simulations is observed.

Experimental demonstration of coherent supercontinuum generation in a silicon wire pumped at telecommunication wavelengths

“…The measured output spectrum is shown on fig 1 (b) and compared to simulations (a) of the Generalized Nonlinear Schrödinger Equation [9]. Further experimental and simulation parameters can be found in [8]. The supercontinuum spans over more than 500 nm and we find good agreement with simulations.…”

“…Here we demonstrate, to the best of our knowledge, the first integrated coherent supercontinuum pumped at telecommunication wavelengths. We work on the silicon on insulator (SOI) platform where supercontinuum generation in the femtosecond regime was shown to be possible at telecom wavelengths despite the strong two-photon based nonlinear losses inherent to that wavelength region [7,8].…”

Observation of an optical event horizon in a silicon-on-insulator photonic wire waveguide

“…c )/N c is the freecarrier index [3,37]. γ = (234 + i15) W −1 m −1 is the complex nonlinear parameter and R(t ) is the response function accounting for the instantaneous and delayed Raman contributions to the nonlinearity [3,33,38]. The dispersion of the nonlinearity is modeled by the time derivative term in the nonlinear terms, where τ shock = 1/ω pump + 1/n 2 ∂ n 2 /∂ ω − 1/a e f f ∂ a e f f /∂ ω, with n 2 the Kerr nonlinear coefficient and a e f f the effective mode area.…”

“…Such platforms have already been successfully used, among others, for the generation of supercontinuum at telecommunication wavelengths [31][32][33]. The dispersion properties of the structure, essential to the observation of optical event horizons, have been tailored through the waveguide dimensions.…”

III-V-on-Silicon Photonic Devices for Optical Communication and Sensing

“…On the SOI platform, by taking advantage of the large Kerr index of silicon (n2 ≈ 6 × 10 −18 m 2 /W) and the tight confinement of light due to its large index contrast, SCG has been successfully demonstrated in different pump pulse width regimes and wavelength ranges [67][68][69][70][71]. However, silicon as a nonlinear material for SCG has certain drawbacks: its small bandgap of 1.1 eV means that it suffers from large nonlinear losses due to two-photon absorption (TPA) and the associated free-carrier absorption (FCA) when pumping at wavelengths below 2.2 μm.…”