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Optics Express

Self-induced optical modulation of the transmission through a high-Q silicon microdisk resonator

Thomas James Johnson, Matthew Borselli, Oskar J. Painter

Published Jan 1, 2006• 259 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Direct time-domain observations are reported of a low-power, self-induced modulation of the transmitted optical power through a high-Q silicon microdisk resonator. Above a threshold input power of 60 microW the transmission versus wavelength deviates from a simple optical bistability behavior, and the transmission intensity becomes highly oscillatory in nature. The transmission oscillations are seen to consist of a train of sharp transmission dips of width approximately 100 ns and period close to 1 micros. A model of the system is developed incorporating thermal and free-carrier dynamics, and is compared to the observed behavior. Good agreement is found, and the self-induced optical modulation is attributed to a nonlinear interaction between competing free-carrier and phonon populations within the microdisk.

DOI
10.1364/opex.14.000817

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Direct time-domain observations are reported of a low-power, self-induced modulation of the transmitted optical power through a high-Q silicon microdisk resonator. Above a threshold input power of 60 microW the transmission versus wavelength deviates from a simple optical bistability behavior, and the transmission intensity becomes highly oscillatory in nature. The transmission oscillations are seen to consist of a train of sharp transmission dips of width approximately 100 ns and period close to 1 micros. A model of the system is developed incorporating thermal and free-carrier dynamics, and is compared to the observed behavior. Good agreement is found, and the self-induced optical modulation is attributed to a nonlinear interaction between competing free-carrier and phonon populations within the microdisk.
We demonstrate, for the first time to our knowledge, optical bistability on a highly integrated silicon device, using a 5-microm-radius ring resonator. The strong light-confinement nature of the resonator induces nonlinear optical response with low pump power. We show that the optical bistability allows all-optical functionalities, such as switching and memory with microsecond time response and a modulation depth of 10 dB, driven by pump power as low as 45 microW. Silicon optical bistability relies on a fast thermal nonlinear optical effect presenting a 500-kHz modulation bandwidth.
We present a detailed experimental study of the mitigation of two-photon absorption (TPA) in a silicon micro ring modulator. TPA induced free-carrier absorption results in interesting optoelectronic process in silicon ring resonators. In this work, we study the effect of optical and RF power on the spectral characteristics of a ring modulator. In particular, we report the evolution of optical bistability in the transmission spectrum with free carriers and thermally induced refractive index change.
An investigation into the relationship between two-photon-induced carrier dynamics and nonlinear optical resonance is carried out for an InP microdisk. A phenomenological model is developed and algebraic solutions are presented for the resulting bistability turn-on and turn-off transition points. It is shown that the offset between the operating wavelength and the un-illuminated resonance wavelength plays a critical role in defining the optical bus line intensity requirements at the input and the intensity contrast ratio at the output.
This study proposes a novel silicon nanocrystal SiNC/SiO[Formula: see text] embedded slotted photonic crystal nanocavity employing precise width modulation to explore optical bistability and self-pulsing behavior for microwave signal generation. The designed cavity achieves an ultra-high quality factor (Q) of [Formula: see text] and a low modal volume of [Formula: see text]. Theoretical modeling incorporating Kerr nonlinearity, two-photon absorption, and free carrier effects is used to analyze the bistability response. Simulation results reveal a low threshold power of [Formula: see text] for optical bistability under a - 20 pm detuning condition. Additionally, the cavity demonstrates microwave frequency generation through self-pulsing oscillations, with a fundamental mode and observable second harmonic at 21.34 GHz. Fabrication tolerance is also evaluated, showing that the design sustains performance with up to 9% randomness in hole radii, 12% in x-position, and 20% in z-position of air holes. These findings confirm the feasibility of the proposed structure for low-power, high-frequency integrated photonic applications.
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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.