High-Q titanium dioxide micro-ring resonators for integrated nonlinear photonics.

We report on the nonlinear characterizations of the titanium dioxide micro-ring resonators (TiO2 MRRs). By utilizing optimized fabrication processes, high quality factors (Q∼1.4 × 105) doubling that of the previous work are achieved here for TiO2 MRRs with high-confinement TiO2 waveguides. The four-wave mixing (FWM) experiment results with low and high signal power demonstrate that, the fabricated TiO2 MRRs can perform broadband (∼40 nm) wavelength conversion and cascaded FWMs. These achievements pave the way for key nonlinear photonic applications with TiO2 waveguides and provide an efficient platform for various integrated photonic devices.

Benchmarking five numerical simulation techniques for computing resonance wavelengths and quality factors in photonic crystal membrane line defect cavities.

We present numerical studies of two photonic crystal membrane microcavities, a short line-defect cavity with a relatively low quality (Q) factor and a longer cavity with a high Q. We use five state-of-the-art numerical simulation techniques to compute the cavity Q factor and the resonance wavelength λ for the fundamental cavity mode in both structures. For each method, the relevant computational parameters are systematically varied to estimate the computational uncertainty. We show that some methods are more suitable than others for treating these challenging geometries.

Bandwidth-adaptable silicon photonic differentiator employing a slow light effect.

A photonic differentiator (DIFF) plays a crucial role in photonic circuits. Despite the fact that a DIFF having a terahertz bandwidth has been reported, the practical bandwidth is limited to being a bandpass response. In this Letter, we propose the concept of a bandwidth-adaptable DIFF, which exploits the slow light effect in a photonic crystal waveguide (PhCW) to overcome the inherent bandwidth limitation of current photonic DIFFs. We fabricated a PhCW Mach-Zehnder interferometer (PhCW-MZI) on the silicon-on-isolator material platform to validate our concept. Input Gaussian pulses with full width to half-maximums (FWHMs) ranging from 2.7 to 81.4 ps are accurately differentiated using our PhCW-MZI. Our all-passive scheme circumvents the bandwidth bottlenecks of previously reported photonic DIFFs and can greatly broaden the application area of photonic DIFFs.

Slow-light-enhanced energy efficiency for graphene microheaters on silicon photonic crystal waveguides.

Slow light has been widely utilized to obtain enhanced nonlinearities, enhanced spontaneous emissions and increased phase shifts owing to its ability to promote light-matter interactions. By incorporating a graphene on a slow-light silicon photonic crystal waveguide, here we experimentally demonstrate an energy-efficient graphene microheater with a tuning efficiency of 1.07 nmmW-1 and power consumption per free spectral range of 3.99 mW. The rise and decay times (10-90%) are only 750 and 525 ns, which, to the best of our knowledge, are the fastest reported response times for microheaters in silicon photonics. The corresponding figure of merit of the device is 2.543 nW s, one order of magnitude better than results reported in previous studies. The influence of the length and shape of the graphene heater to the tuning efficiency is further investigated, providing valuable guidelines for enhancing the tuning efficiency of the graphene microheater.

Effective Electro-Optical Modulation with High Extinction Ratio by a Graphene-Silicon Microring Resonator.

Graphene opens up for novel optoelectronic applications thanks to its high carrier mobility, ultralarge absorption bandwidth, and extremely fast material response. In particular, the opportunity to control optoelectronic properties through tuning of the Fermi level enables electro-optical modulation, optical-optical switching, and other optoelectronics applications. However, achieving a high modulation depth remains a challenge because of the modest graphene-light interaction in the graphene-silicon devices, typically, utilizing only a monolayer or few layers of graphene. Here, we comprehensively study the interaction between graphene and a microring resonator, and its influence on the optical modulation depth. We demonstrate graphene-silicon microring devices showing a high modulation depth of 12.5 dB with a relatively low bias voltage of 8.8 V. On-off electro-optical switching with an extinction ratio of 3.8 dB is successfully demonstrated by applying a square-waveform with a 4 V peak-to-peak voltage.