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Optics Express

Optical bistability and pulsating behaviour in Silicon-On-Insulator ring resonator structures

Gino Priem, Pieter Dumon, Wim Bogaerts, Dries Van Thourhout, Geert I. Morthier, Roel Baets

Published Jan 1, 2005• 202 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We demonstrate optical bistability in a Silicon-On-Insulator two-bus ring resonator with input powers as low as 0.3mW. We evaluate the importance of the different nonlinear contributions and derive time constants for carrier and thermal relaxation effects. In some cases, we also observe pulsation due to interaction between the dominant nonlinear effects. Such a behaviour may be problematic for possible memory and switching operations. Alternatively, it could be used for (tunable) pulse generation.

DOI
10.1364/opex.13.009623

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We demonstrate optical bistability in a Silicon-On-Insulator two-bus ring resonator with input powers as low as 0.3mW. We evaluate the importance of the different nonlinear contributions and derive time constants for carrier and thermal relaxation effects. In some cases, we also observe pulsation due to interaction between the dominant nonlinear effects. Such a behaviour may be problematic for possible memory and switching operations. Alternatively, it could be used for (tunable) pulse generation.
We investigate the significance of secondary effects caused by free carrier accumulation and subsequent heating on the nonlinear behaviour of ultrasmall Silicon-On-Insulator ring resonators. All-optical bistability based on thermal dispersion was experimentally obtained for an input power of only 0.28mW. At higher powers, pulsating behaviour was observed which is problematic for the stability of thermal memory and switching operations. Using free carrier dispersion, we also demonstrate all-optical wavelength conversion with a pulse length of 10 ns, indicating that bitrates of 0.1 Gb/s are feasible. Also here, the presence of unstable pulsations was observed, leading to significant errors in the converted data pattern.
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 analyze theoretically the nonlinear phenomenon of optical bistability inside a ring resonator formed with a silicon-waveguide nanowire and derive an exact parametric relation connecting the output intensity to the input intensity. Our input-output relation accounts for linear losses, the Kerr nonlinearity, two-photon absorption, free-carrier-induced absorption and dispersion, and thermo-optic effects within the resonator. Based on our study, we generalize the standard definition of effective length to allow for all possible losses within a silicon ring resonator. We also present a simplified version of the bistable phenomenon valid for resonators operating in a regime in which losses resulting from two-photon absorption are relatively small. Our analytical results provide clear insight into the physics behind optical bistability and may be useful for designing silicon-based optical memories.
We describe the optical bistability phenomenon in a silicon-on-insulator microring resonators device by using an analytical theory, which includes both linear and nonlinear effects such as two-photon absorption, Kerr effect, free carrier and thermo-optic effect (TOE). We show that the bistable switching threshold and the hysteresis loop width can be tuned by geometrical parameters of the device and by the nonlinear parameters. The accuracy of the analytical approach is verified by comparing the spectrum responds with the predicting data from a commercial finite-difference time-domain software tool, and a very close agreement is found between the two when TOE is incorporated in analytical theory. In addition, our analysis reveals that a new type of hysteresis loop occurs at low input intensity. The mode suppression of the designed device by Vernier effect for tunable filter applications is also briefly discussed.