Abstract
Integrated multiple-wavelength laser sources, critical for important applications such as high-precision broadband sensing and spectroscopy1, molecular fingerprinting2, optical clocks3 and attosecond physics4, have recently been demonstrated in silica and single-crystal microtoroid resonators using parametric gain2,5,6. However, for applications in telecommunications7 and optical interconnects8, analogous devices compatible with a fully integrated platform9 do not yet exist. Here, we report a fully integrated, CMOS-compatible, multiple-wavelength source. We achieve optical ‘hyper-parametric’ oscillation in a high-index silica-glass microring resonator10 with a differential slope efficiency above threshold of 7.4% for a single oscillating mode, a continuous-wave threshold power as low as 54 mW, and a controllable range of frequency spacing from 200 GHz to more than 6 THz. The low loss, design flexibility and CMOS compatibility of this device will enable the creation of multiple-wavelength sources for telecommunications, computing, sensing, metrology and other areas.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centres of Excellence program, the FQRNT (Le Fonds Québécois de la Recherche sur la Nature et les Technologies), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), NSERC Strategic Projects and the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS). L.R. would like to acknowledge a Marie Curie Outgoing International Fellowship (contract no. 040514). The authors are also grateful to M. Liscidini, M. Lamont and J. Sipe for useful discussions.
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L.R., D.J.M. and R.M. provided management oversight for this project, designed the experiments and analysed the data. L.R. also carried out the measurements. D.D. and M.F. designed the experiments, carried out the measurements and analysed the data. S.C. and B.E.L. designed and fabricated the devices. All authors contributed to the final manuscript.
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Razzari, L., Duchesne, D., Ferrera, M. et al. CMOS-compatible integrated optical hyper-parametric oscillator. Nature Photon 4, 41–45 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2009.236
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2009.236
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