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Nonlinear properties of and nonlinear processing in hydrogenated amorphous silicon waveguides

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Abstract

We propose hydrogenated amorphous silicon nanowires as a platform for nonlinear optics in the telecommunication wavelength range. Extraction of the nonlinear parameter of these photonic nanowires reveals a figure of merit larger than 2. It is observed that the nonlinear optical properties of these waveguides degrade with time, but that this degradation can be reversed by annealing the samples. A four wave mixing conversion efficiency of + 12 dB is demonstrated in a 320 Gbit/s serial optical waveform data sampling experiment in a 4 mm long photonic nanowire.

©2011 Optical Society of America

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Figures (8)

Fig. 1
Fig. 1 Cross-section of the hydrogenated amorphous silicon waveguides used in the experiments
Fig. 2
Fig. 2 The reciprocal transmission as a function of the input peak power of the 4 ps pulse train. The linear fit corresponds to a nonlinear absorption coefficient of −28 ± 3 W−1m−1.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3 Experimental setup used to measure the free carrier lifetime in the hydrogenated amorphous silicon photonic nanowires.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4 Oscilloscope trace of the pump/probe experiment and fit of the exponential decay of the carrier concentration, resulting in a time constant of 1.87 ± 0.1 ns.
Fig. 5
Fig. 5 The simulated output spectra of a 4ps FWHM pulse train (right) and measured output spectra (left) for a coupled input peak power of 1.4, 2.9, 4.6 and 7.3W after propagation through a 1.1 cm long a-Si:H photonic nanowire.
Fig. 6
Fig. 6 Experimental setup used in the 320 Gbit/s waveform sampling experiment
Fig. 7
Fig. 7 (Left) Sampled eye-diagram of the 320 Gbit/s serial data signal using the a-Si:H based optical sampling system, (Middle) Measured optical spectra before and after the a-Si:H waveguide, (Right) Spectrum of data signal and FWM product at output of waveguide when subtracting the pump.
Fig. 8
Fig. 8 The modulation instability (MI) side lobes decrease over time (left) when the sample is exposed to intense light. The optical pulses in this experiment had their central wavelength at 1550 nm, had a repetition rate of 10 MHz and a FWHM of 4ps. The right figure shows the peak value of the right MI side lobe versus time, after successive thermal annealing steps of the sample at 200°C for 30 minutes.

Equations (3)

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1 T =exp(αL) L eff 2Im(γ)P+exp(αL)
FOM= Re(γ) 4πIm(γ)
η= (P FWM_out + l coupling ) - (P data_out + l coupling +l)
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