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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

Applications of nonlinear effects in silicon wire waveguides: all-optical modulation, wavelength conversion, and quantum entanglement

Koji Yamada, Tai Tsuchizawa, T. Watanabe, Hiroshi Fukuda, Hiroyuki Shinojima, Hidetaka Nishi, Hiroki Takesue, T. Tanabe, Akihiko Shinya, Eiichi Kuramochi, Masaya Notomi, 康弘 都倉, Sei-ichi Itabashi

Published Nov 6, 2008• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We demonstrate efficient nonlinear functions using silicon nanophotonic structures. In the ultrasmall core of the waveguides and cavities, nonlinear phenomena are significantly enhanced. Applying the two-photon absorption effect, we have confirmed all optical modulation, in which the modulation speed is improved to around 50 ps by eliminating free carriers. Applying the four-wave-mixing effect, we have achieved high-efficiency wavelength conversion. The conversion efficiency is -11 dB, and the efficiency will be further improved by eliminating free carriers. Using the four-wave- mixing effect, we have also realized a low-noise entangled photon pair source. The source does not need a refrigeration system for noise reduction, which is a great advantage for practical application.

DOI
10.1117/12.803760

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IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics•Apr 13, 2012•29 citations
We demonstrate efficient nonlinear functions using silicon nanophotonic structures. In the ultrasmall core of the
waveguides and cavities, nonlinear phenomena are significantly enhanced. Applying the two-photon absorption effect,
we have confirmed all optical modulation, in which the modulation speed is improved to around 50 ps by eliminating
free carriers. Applying the four-wave-mixing effect, we have achieved high-efficiency wavelength conversion. The
conversion efficiency is -11 dB, and the efficiency will be further improved by eliminating free carriers. Using the four-wave-
mixing effect, we have also realized a low-noise entangled photon pair source. The source does not need a
refrigeration system for noise reduction, which is a great advantage for practical application.
Four-wave mixing (FWM) in silicon photonics offers promising applications in optical signal processing, wavelength conversion, and quantum photonics, necessitating a comprehensive understanding of its underlying physics and limitations. Stimulated four-wave mixing in silicon photonic wire waveguides has been investigated theoretically by considering two-photon absorption, free carrier absorption, and free carrier dispersion, etc., operating near λ∼1550 nm. It has been shown that these effects severely degrade the performance when operating at higher pump power levels. We present exact numerical calculations of idler wavelength conversion efficiency and bandwidth taking into account the abovementioned nonlinearities, to show the effects of various parameters within the waveguide structure. We extended to investigate silicon photonic microring resonators in terms of the four-wave mixing performance of high-Q-value microring resonators, which are very promising as photon sources (spontaneous four-wave mixing) for large-scale quantum photonic circuits. Our analysis illustrates the limitations of analytical models in describing FWM in ring resonator behavior at a moderate input power level, necessitating a rigorous numerical approach. Experimentally, we demonstrate stimulated FWM (1525 nm≤λp≤1575 nm) in a silicon photonic wire with a cross-section of 500 nm×220 nm and with a small waveguide length of 2 mm. The idler-to-signal conversion efficiency of about −35 dB has been measured for an approximate launched pump power of 30 mW. The conversion efficiency is improved further in the microring resonator as predicted by the simulation results.
Silicon photonics has drawn a lot of attention over the last decades, mainly in telecom-related application fields where the nonlinear optical properties of silicon are ignored or minimized. However, silicon’s high χ(3) Kerr optical nonlinearity in sub-micron-scale high-confinement waveguides can enable significant improvements in traditional nonlinear devices, such as for wavelength conversion, and also enable some device applications in quantum optics or for quantum key distribution. In order to establish the viability of silicon photonics in practical applications, some big challenges are to improve the optical performance (e.g., optimize nonlinearity or minimize loss) and integration of optics with microelectronics. In this context, we discuss how electronic PIN diodes improve the performance of wavelength conversion in a microring resonator based four-wave mixing device, which achieves a continuous-wave four-wave mixing conversion efficiency of −21.3 dB at 100 mW pump power, with enough bandwidth for the wavelength conversion of a 10 Gbps signal. In the regime of quantum optics, we describe a coupled microring device that can serve as a tunable source of entangled photon pairs at telecommunications wavelengths, operating at room temperature with a low pump power requirement. By controlling either the optical pump wavelength, or the chip temperature, we show that the output bi-photon spectrum can be varied, with implications on the degree of frequency correlation of the generated quantum state.
Quantum-based communication systems can potentially achieve the ultimate security from eavesdropping and greatly reduce the operating powers on chip. Light-speed transmission, noise immunity, and low noise properties make photons indispensable for quantum communication to transfer a quantum state through a transmission line. Furthermore, the field of silicon nanophotonics is fast growing field which is driven by the attractive and promising improvements it has to offer in high speed communication systems and on chip optical interconnects. Consequently, there is a high demand to develop the building blocks for photon manipulation in silicon nanophotonic circuits. The goal of the work is to enable high performance optoelectronic computing and communication systems that overcome the barriers of electronics and dramatically enhance the performance of circuits and systems. We will focus our attention on solving some of the issues with the current systems regarding photon storage, routing, isolation, switching, and energy conversion. We realize a continuously tunable optical memory which breaks the time-bandwidth limit by more than thirty times. This enabled the storage of ultra-short pulses of light for hundreds of picoseconds. Also, we investigate on-chip photon scattering when transmitted through micro-scale optical cavities. In addition, we develop novel dynamic quantum mechanical models that predict quantum-like behavior of single and multi-photon wavepackets. Furthermore, we report for the first time that efficient red shifts in silicon are achievable with free carrier injection which generally produces blue wavelength shifts. We realize adiabatic wavelength conversion and discrete photonic transitions of single photons in silicon cavities. Moreover, we demonstrate a basic quantum network on chip with an on-chip photon source. We present a novel design for CMOS compatible optical isolator on silicon chip using a system of active cavities. And finally, we analyze a novel ultra-fast broadband modulator in silicon based on free-carrier absorption effect in SOI waveguides integrated with Schottky diodes.
Resonant devices are an integral component of the integrated silicon photonics platform, with applications in filters, switches, modulators, delays, sensors etc. High index contrast SOI waveguides can be used to form compact micro-ring resonators with bend radii on the order of micro-meters. This work describes the application of micro-ring resonators in linear and nonlinear silicon photonics. We describe the use of higher-order coupled resonators for use as ultra-high contrast pass-band filters with close to 100 dB extinction. Using the spontaneous four-wave mixing process, a third-order nonlinear Kerr effect, coupled resonator waveguides are shown to be a useful source of heralded single photons, as well as other unique quantum states of light. We also describe four-wave mixing results in silicon micro-resonators, where nonlinear loss effects are mitigated by reverse biased p-i-n diodes, showing potential for high-speed optical signal processing.
Entangled photon pair generation is an important technology for realizing quantum information systems. Among various entangled photon pair sources, a source based on spontaneous four-wave mixing (SFWM) in a silicon wire waveguide (SWW) is now drawing attention. Thanks to the very large third-order nonlinearity in an SWW, we can realize highly efficient SFWM in a short ( ~ 1 cm) waveguide, which will possibly lead to an integrated entanglement source on a silicon chip. In this paper, we review recent progress on SWW-based entanglement sources. This study reviews the basic theory of SFWM, and then describes correlated and entangled photon generation experiments using SWWs and applications to quantum information experiments.