Effect of frequency chirp on supercontinuum generation in silicon waveguides with two zero-dispersion wavelengths

Abstract

The influence of initial chirp on supercontinuum generation in SOI rib waveguide with two zero-dispersion wavelengths was studied numerically, based on the generalized nonlinear Schrödinger equation (GNSE). The full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) and the peak power of the pre-chirped hyperbolic secant in the simulation are 50fs and 50W, respectively. The simulation results indicate that a positive initial chirp makes the energy transfer to the normal dispersion zone by affecting self-phase modulation (SPM) and four-wave mixing (FWM) processes, and therefore enhances the supercontinuum bandwidth as well as improves the spectral flatness. In particular, at the optimal initial chirp parameter of C=3, the bandwidth at −10dB level increases to about 1620nm (from 1140 to 2760nm), exceeding an octave-spanning.