A chip-based temporal compressor for shortening the duration of optical pulses has been developed by scientists in Japan. The scientists at Yokohama National University made their compressor from a silicon photonic crystal waveguide. Co-propagating slow light is used as a control pulse and serves to induce carrier plasma dispersion in the waveguide through two-photon absorption. The efficiency of the effect is greatly enhanced due to the control pulse propagating in the slow-light regime. The induced dispersion is used to spectrally broaden or 'chirp' a signal pulse. Dispersion compensation, invoked by a series of seven pairs of integrated heaters spaced along the length of the waveguide, is then used to compress the pulse. Using the scheme, the team report compressing a 13.9 ps input pulse down to a duration of 1.4 ps, corresponding to a compression factor of 9.9.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Graydon, O. On-chip pulse compression. Nature Photon 9, 210 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2015.51
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2015.51