Open AccessFour-wave mixing in slow light engineered silicon photonic crystal waveguides
Author(s) -
Christelle Monat,
Majid Ebnali-Heidari,
Christian Grillet,
Bill Corcoran,
Benjamin J. Eggleton,
Thomas P. White,
Liam O’Faoláin,
J Li,
Thomas F. Krauss
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
optics express
Language(s) - Uncategorized
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.394
H-Index - 271
ISSN - 1094-4087
DOI - 10.1364/oe.18.022915
Subject(s) - optics , slow light , group velocity , four wave mixing , energy conversion efficiency , dispersion (optics) , materials science , photonic crystal , silicon , mixing (physics) , bandwidth (computing) , nonlinear optics , optoelectronics , physics , laser , telecommunications , quantum mechanics , computer science
We experimentally investigate four-wave mixing (FWM) in short (80 μm) dispersion-engineered slow light silicon photonic crystal waveguides. The pump, probe and idler signals all lie in a 14 nm wide low dispersion region with a near-constant group velocity of c/30. We measure an instantaneous conversion efficiency of up to -9dB between the idler and the continuous-wave probe, with 1W peak pump power and 6 nm pump-probe detuning. This conversion efficiency is found to be considerably higher (>10 × ) than that of a Si nanowire with a group velocity ten times larger. In addition, we estimate the FWM bandwidth to be at least that of the flat band slow light window. These results, supported by numerical simulations, emphasize the importance of engineering the dispersion of PhC waveguides to exploit the slow light enhancement of FWM efficiency, even for short device lengths.