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All-optical signal processing is envisioned as an approach to dramaticallydecrease power consumption and speed up performance of next-generation opticaltelecommunications networks. Nonlinear optical effects, such as four-wavemixing (FWM) and parametric gain, have long been explored to realizeall-optical functions in glass fibers. An alternative approach is to employnanoscale engineering of silicon waveguides to enhance the opticalnonlinearities by up to five orders of magnitude, enabling integratedchip-scale all-optical signal processing. Previously, strong two-photonabsorption (TPA) of the telecom-band pump has been a fundamental andunavoidable obstacle, limiting parametric gain to values on the order of a fewdB. Here we demonstrate a silicon nanophotonic optical parametric amplifierexhibiting gain as large as 25.4 dB, by operating the pump in the mid-IR nearone-half the band-gap energy (E~0.55eV, lambda~2200nm), at which parasiticTPA-related absorption vanishes. This gain is high enough to compensate allinsertion losses, resulting in 13 dB net off-chip amplification. Furthermore,dispersion engineering dramatically increases the gain bandwidth to more than220 nm, all realized using an ultra-compact 4 mm silicon chip. Beyond itssignificant relevance to all-optical signal processing, the broadbandparametric gain also facilitates the simultaneous generation of multipleon-chip mid-IR sources through cascaded FWM, covering a 500 nm spectral range.Together, these results provide a foundation for the construction ofsilicon-based room-temperature mid-IR light sources including tunablechip-scale parametric oscillators, optical frequency combs, and supercontinuumgenerators.

Mid-infrared optical parametric amplifier using silicon nanophotonic waveguides