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Electrically controlled on-demand photon transfer between high-Q photonic crystal nanocavities on a silicon chip

Nature Photonics volume 16, pages 113–118 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Optical buffer memories, which do not rely on an intermediate conversion between optical and electrical signals, can be used to realize optical networks with low latency and low energy consumption. Photonic-crystal nanocavities can confine photons in a very small region for a long time, and thus may be used as core components of such optical buffer memories. However, a scalable method for on-demand photon transfer between nanocavities is required. Here we demonstrate a photonics–electronics integration solution that realizes electrical control of a coupled ultrahigh-quality-factor nanocavity system on a silicon chip. In this system, the photons confined in one of the two storage nanocavities can be transferred to the other storage nanocavity by applying a voltage pulse to the control cavity. A transfer efficiency of 76% and a cavity photon lifetime of 1.3 ns after the transfer are achieved.

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Fig. 1: The fabricated PC chip.
Fig. 2: Time-resolved signals from cavities A and B.
Fig. 3: Voltage dependence of the photon transfer efficiency.
Fig. 4: Expected photon transfer characteristics of an improved structure.

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Data availability

All the data supporting the findings of this study are available within this Article and its Supplementary Information, and are also available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Code availability

All associated codes for simulations are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank B.S. Song for fruitful discussions. This work was partially supported by KAKENHI grants nos. 18J23217 and 19H02629, and received funding from the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) under grant no. JPNP13004.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electronic Science and Engineering, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    Masahiro Nakadai, Takashi Asano & Susumu Noda

  2. Photonics and Electronics Science and Engineering Center, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    Susumu Noda

Authors
  1. Masahiro Nakadai
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  2. Takashi Asano
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  3. Susumu Noda
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Contributions

M.N. developed the fabrication process and performed the experiment. T.A. set up the measurement system and performed the simulations of the p–i–n structure. S.N. designed the study with T.A. All authors analysed the results and contributed to the writing of the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Masahiro Nakadai, Takashi Asano or Susumu Noda.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Peer review information Nature Photonics thanks Sui Yang and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–5 and Discussion.

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Nakadai, M., Asano, T. & Noda, S. Electrically controlled on-demand photon transfer between high-Q photonic crystal nanocavities on a silicon chip. Nat. Photon. 16, 113–118 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-021-00910-y

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