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Mid-infrared optical parametric amplifier using silicon nanophotonic waveguides

Nature Photonics volume 4, pages 557–560 (2010)Cite this article

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Abstract

All-optical signal processing is an approach used to dramatically decrease power consumption and speed up the performance of next-generation optical telecommunications networks1,2,3. Nonlinear optical effects such as four-wave mixing and parametric gain have been explored to realize all-optical functions in glass fibres4. An alternative approach is to use nanoscale engineering of silicon waveguides to enhance optical nonlinearities by up to five orders of magnitude5, enabling integrated chip-scale all-optical signal processing. Four-wave mixing within silicon nanophotonic waveguides has been used to demonstrate telecom-band (λ ≈ 1,550 nm) all-optical functions including wavelength conversion6,7,8,9, signal regeneration10 and tunable optical delay11. Despite these important advances, strong two-photon absorption12 of the telecom-band pump presents a fundamental obstacle, limiting parametric gain to values of several decibels13. Here, we demonstrate a silicon nanophotonic optical parametric amplifier exhibiting broadband gain as high as 25.4 dB, using a mid-infrared pump near one-half the bandgap energy (E ≈ 0.55 eV, λ ≈ 2,200 nm), where parasitic two-photon absorption-related absorption vanishes12,14,15. This gain is high enough to compensate all insertion losses, resulting in 13-dB net off-chip amplification, using only an ultra-compact 4-mm silicon chip. Furthermore, engineering of higher-order waveguide dispersion16 can potentially enable mid-infrared-pumped silicon parametric oscillators17,18,19 and amplifiers for telecom-band optical signals.

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Figure 1: Engineered silicon nanophotonic waveguide characteristics, mid-infrared FWM experiments and broadband on-chip optical parametric amplification.
Figure 2: Mid-infrared optical parametric amplifier performance characteristics.
Figure 3: Broadband mid-infrared light generation by efficient cascaded FWM.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge help from the staff at the IBM Microelectronics Research Laboratory where the silicon nanophotonic OPA devices were fabricated, K. Reuter and B. Price for assistance with SEM images, and J. Dadap for assistance with optimization of the pulsed laser system used in the experiments. Thanks also go to T. Kippenberg, G. Roelkens, R. Soref, S. Assefa and J. Van Campenhout for many helpful and motivating discussions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical Engineering, Columbia University, 1300 S.W. Mudd Building, 500 W. 120th Street, New York, New York, 10027, USA

    Xiaoping Liu & Richard M. Osgood Jr

  2. IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York, 10598, USA

    Yurii A. Vlasov & William M. J. Green

Authors
  1. Xiaoping Liu
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  2. Richard M. Osgood Jr
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  3. Yurii A. Vlasov
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  4. William M. J. Green
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Contributions

W.M.J.G. conceived and supervised the experiments, and developed the device fabrication process. X.L. performed the numerical dispersion engineering, effective nonlinearity and nonlinear pulse propagation calculations, under the supervision of R.M.O. X.L. and W.M.J.G. jointly designed the mid-infrared waveguide dimensions and performed the experiments. X.L., R.M.O., Y.A.V. and W.M.J.G. all contributed to the data analysis and writing of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to William M. J. Green.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Liu, X., Osgood, R., Vlasov, Y. et al. Mid-infrared optical parametric amplifier using silicon nanophotonic waveguides. Nature Photon 4, 557–560 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2010.119

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