Raman enhanced four-wave mixing in silicon core fibers
Shiyu Sun, Meng Huang, Dong Wu, Li Shen, Haonan Ren, Thomas W. Hawkins, John Ballato, Ursula J. Gibson, Goran Z. Mashanovich, Anna C. Peacock
Abstract
A strong Raman enhancement to the four-wave mixing (FWM) conversion efficiency is obtained in a silicon core fiber (SCF) when pumped with a continuous-wave (CW) source in the telecom band. By tapering the SCFs to alter the core diameter and length, the role of phase-matching on the conversion enhancement is investigated, with a maximum Raman enhancement of ∼15 dB obtained for an SCF with a zero dispersion wavelength close to the pump. Simulations show that by optimizing the tapered waist diameter to overlap the FWM phase-matching with the peak Raman gain, it is possible to obtain large Raman enhanced FWM conversion efficiencies of up to ∼2 dB using modest CW pump powers over wavelengths covering the extended telecom bands.