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Efficient and Broadband Four‐Wave Mixing in a Compact Silicon Subwavelength Nanohole Waveguide
Author(s) -
Yang Yuxing,
Sun Lu,
Zhang Yong,
Su Yikai
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
advanced optical materials
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.89
H-Index - 91
ISSN - 2195-1071
DOI - 10.1002/adom.201900810
Subject(s) - materials science , silicon , waveguide , broadband , four wave mixing , optics , optoelectronics , silicon photonics , bandwidth (computing) , amplifier , energy conversion efficiency , mixing (physics) , nonlinear optics , physics , telecommunications , laser , cmos , computer science , quantum mechanics
Confining light in a small volume offers an effective approach to enhance the four‐wave mixing (FWM) process. Recently, most efforts are devoted to improve the conversion efficiencies by using resonant structures. As a result, the bandwidths of the FWM conversions are typically limited to 1–2 nm. In this paper, a nonresonant silicon subwavelength nanohole waveguide is proposed to manipulate the field distribution of the propagating wave. The electromagnetic field of the Bloch mode can be engineered to concentrate in the silicon area where the FWM process occurs. Benefiting from the enhanced light intensity, an efficient and broadband FWM process is experimentally demonstrated. A conversion efficiency of −26.7 dB is achieved with a carefully designed silicon nanohole waveguide, showing a 12.5 dB improvement relative to a conventional silicon strip waveguide. The 3 dB conversion bandwidth of the silicon nanohole waveguide is ≈37 nm, limited by the optical amplifiers employed in the experiment.