Widely tunable silicon Raman laser
Mohammad Ahmadi, Wei Shi, Sophie LaRochelle
Abstract
Stimulated Raman scattering is an effective means of wavelength conversion and can largely extend the operating spectral range of an optical source. We demonstrate a high-performance tunable Raman laser on a sub-micrometer-thick silicon on insulator wafer using a standard foundry process. The key feature to this laser is the use of a tunable coupling mechanism to adjust both pump and signal coupling coefficients in the ring cavity, allowing demonstration of laser emission over a large wavelength tuning range of 83 nm. This Raman laser demonstrates efficient (slope of up to 26% and a maximum pump-to-signal power conversion efficiency of 10%) on-chip nonlinear wavelength conversion. Our results indicate great promise for substantially increasing the optical spectral resources available on a silicon chip.