Four-wave Mixing In Silicon Waveguides And Micro-ring Resonators And Its Application In Wavelength Conversion

Silicon waveguides based on the SOI (silicon-on-insulator) structure have been widely used in the fields of nonlinear signal processing due to their mature fabrication process, large third-order nonlinearity, and tight confinement of optical waves. The theoretical model of four-wave mixing-based wavelength conversion in a SOI waveguide and micro-ring is investigated. The optimal design is presented for the application of wavelength conversion. The 10 GB/s data signal all-optical wavelength conversion based on four-wave mixing (FWM) is experimentally demonstrated.First we introduce the background of silicon photonics and the principle of FWM-based wavelength conversion in the silicon waveguides. Then the theoretical model is established and the optimal design is performed for four-wave mixing-based wavelength conversion in a rectangular cross section SOI waveguide. The influence of loss and absorption in the waveguide on the conversion property is analyzed. We establish the two-pump wavelength conversion model based on nondegenerate FWM in SOI waveguide and analyze the effect of bandwidth enhancement.By taking into the nonlinear phase shifts caused by self-phase modulation and cross-phase modulation, the modified model of wavelength conversion based on FWM is proposed in a micro-ring resonator. The wavelength selection and influence factors of conversion efficiency are also analyzed.We experimentally demonstrated the wavelength conversion experiments in SOI waveguides with a continuous-wave pump or a pulsed pump. The 10 GB/s signal is successfully converted to the generated idler. The experiment results show more advantages in bit error rate using pulse pump.