Direct Coupling of Coherent Emission from Site-Selectively Grown III–V Nanowire Lasers into Proximal Silicon Waveguides

Abstract

Semiconductor nanowire (NW) lasers are nanoscale coherent light sources that exhibit a small footprint, low-threshold lasing characteristics, and properties suitable for monolithic and site-selective integration onto Si photonic circuits. An important milestone on the way toward novel on-chip photonic functionalities, such as injection locking of laser emission and all-optical switching mediated by coherent optical coupling and feedback, is the integration of individual, deterministically addressable NW lasers on Si waveguides with efficient coupling and mode propagation in the underlying photonic circuit. Here, we demonstrate the monolithic integration of single GaAs-based NW lasers directly onto lithographically defined Si ridge waveguides (WG) with low threshold power densities of 19.8 μJ/cm2 when optically excited. The lasing mode of individual NW lasers is shown to couple efficiently into propagating modes of the underlying orthogonal Si WG, preserving the lasing characteristics during mode propagati...