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arXiv:2408.06247 · Physical Review Letters

Nonlinear Optical Bistability in Microring Resonators for Enhanced Phase Sensing

Patrick Tritschler, Christian Schweikert, Rouven H. Klenk, Simon Abdani, Onur Sözen, Wolfgang Vogel, Georg Rademacher, Torsten Ohms, André Zimmermann, Peter Degenfeld-Schonburg

Published Mar 25, 2025• 15 citations
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Abstract

Photonic microring resonators are used in a variety of chip-integrated sensing applications where they allow one to measure transmission intensity changes upon external signals with a sensitivity that scales linearly with the Q factor. In this work, we suggest exploiting the nonlinear self-phase-modulation effect to increase the overall sensitivity by an additional gain factor appearing when the operational point of the nonlinear resonator is chosen just at the crossover from the monostable to the bistable regime. We present the theoretical idea together with a first proof of concept experiment displaying a gain factor of 22 on a chip-integrated silicon-nitride resonator.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.134.123802

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Photonic microring resonators are used in a variety of chip-integrated sensing applications where they allow one to measure transmission intensity changes upon external signals with a sensitivity that scales linearly with the Q factor. In this work, we suggest exploiting the nonlinear self-phase-modulation effect to increase the overall sensitivity by an additional gain factor appearing when the operational point of the nonlinear resonator is chosen just at the crossover from the monostable to the bistable regime. We present the theoretical idea together with a first proof of concept experiment displaying a gain factor of 22 on a chip-integrated silicon-nitride resonator.
Resonance shift and bistability in a silicon microring resonator operating at higher optical power levels pose serious difficulties, especially in nonlinear four wave mixing process. A solution of parking a laser wavelength around any of the resonances of a microring resonator and operating at any power levels is explored by integrating a microheater. We have shown with the existing theoretical model that the previous history of phase detuning in a silicon microring resonator determines the effective gain in stimulated four wave mixing process. The experimental results have been shown to be closely matching with the simulation results. For a microring resonator of radius 50 μm, an improved stimulated four wave mixing gain of ~ 11.6 dB has been observed while thermo-optically blue-shifting resonances in comparison to that of red-shifting resonances, for a launched pump power of 8.4 mW operating at a slightly off-resonant wavelength λp. The proposed technique can be used in designing actively controlled efficient photon sources in a large-scale integrated quantum photonic circuit operating at λ ~ 1550 nm.
Ring resonators are critical in optical systems for their compact size and high selectivity. By leveraging optical bistability-arising from nonlinear effects like the Kerr effect-they enable advanced functionalities, whose performance is strictly correlated to ring resonator ones. Here, a silicon nitride ring resonator, with a groundbreaking Q-factor > 150 million and extinction ratio> 5 dB by gaining from low optical losses and Kerr effect, is presented, unlocking new potentials for data storage, sensing and signal processing technologies.
Over the past few decades, optical ring resonators have attracted a considerable amount of attention as versatile elements for a wide range of applications ranging from telecommunication and sensing to basic scientific research [1,2]. The silicon-on-insulator (SOI) material system is a mature fabrication technique and provides the ability to implement microring resonators. In addition, the high confinement of light and the large third-order nonlinearity of silicon at wavelengths in the near infrared, typically around 1.4-1.6 µm, can be utilized for a number of applications by microring resonator devices [3,4]. The optical bistability observed in silicon-based microring resonators have been theoretically investigated and numerically simulated through various sophisticated techniques [5-9]. However, only recently unifying analytical theories regarding nonlinear effects of optical bistability in microring resonators in terms of a slowly varying envelope approach have been reported [10,11]. Previously, we analytically described the nonlinear response of microring resonators consisting of an add-drop filter with feedback and showed that Fano lineshapes can be adjusted by the resonator parameters [12]. In this chapter, we extend our work to examine the optical bistabililty in such microring resonators and test the analytical results with those predicted by the OptiFDTD software package.
Optical bistability (BI) and self-pulsation (SP) in high-QQQ silicon microring resonators (MRRs) induced by thermo-optical (TO) effect and other nonlinear effects are theoretically studied with coupled mode theory and linear stability analysis method. It is found that the boundaries for both BI and SP are mainly restricted by two counteracting effects: free carrier dispersion effect and TO effect. If the refractive index changes of a MRR caused by these two effects are on the same order of magnitude, the output power will exhibit much more complicated dependence on the input power and wavelength, namely, input-power-dependent multi-BI and multi-SP regions will exist at certain input wavelength range. The controllability of multi-BI and multi-SP phenomena by the input power and input wavelength could be very useful in all-optical nonlinear devices.