Simultaneous all-optical sampling and quantization scheme based on the nonlinear Kerr effect in an ultra-compact silicon waveguide grating structure.

In this paper, a novel method for simultaneous all-optical sampling and quantization is presented, to the best of our knowledge. This study utilizes the nonlinear Kerr effect in a silicon-based waveguide grating to realize nonlinear filters in which the sampling pulses are affected by the input signal. Compatible with complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor fabrication, in this ultra-compact two-bit quantizer, the footprint is reduced to 90µm2 which, to the best of our knowledge, is the least among recent similar studies.