Abstract
We report on the experimental demonstration of a novel silicon based fully integrated nonlinear Mach Zehnder device. A standard silicon waveguide is used as a nonlinear arm, conversely a large mode SU-8 waveguide acts as a purely linear arm. Given this asymmetry, an intensity dependent phase shift can be introduced between the two interferometric arms. Thanks to a fine tuning of the silicon arm optical properties, a low power, ultrafast, picosecond operation is demonstrated, allowing the use of this device for ultrafast all-optical signal processing in high density communication networks.
Highlights
Silicon photonics is a well-established platform for the development of fully integrated devices for optical communications system
Our goal is to use the Si arm as a phase shifter by exploiting self- phase modulation (SPM) and cross-phase modulation (XPM), but several nonlinear effects become significant when high optical intensities propagate in a Si waveguide
A novel integrated inhomogeneous nonlinear Mach Zehnder interferometer (MZI), silicon based device has been proposed as a basic building block for all-optical signal processing circuits
Summary
Silicon photonics is a well-established platform for the development of fully integrated devices for optical communications system. A low power probe signal propagates into the interferometer in the linear regime and a high power control beam is used to trigger the nonlinear regime enabling partial or total switching of the probe from one output port to the other This technique allows the demonstration of a number of signal processing functionalities, such as wavelength conversion, time-division demultiplexing and switching, intensity modulation and logic gates operations [7,8]. We propose a fully integrated, silicon photonic, all-optical device allowing ultra-fast switching of an optical signal between the two output ports of a Mach Zehnder interferometer (MZI) In this device the NLE is the Si waveguide constituting one arm of the MZI, allowing efficient nonlinear interaction in a short length and low power operation [2].
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