Brillouin and Kerr nonlinearities of a low-index silicon oxynitride platform
Kaixuan Ye, Yvan Klaver, Oscar A. Jimenez Gordillo, Roel Botter, Okky Daulay, Francesco Morichetti, Andrea Melloni, David Marpaung
Abstract
Nonlinear optical effects including stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) and four-wave mixing (FWM) play an important role in microwave photonics, optical frequency combs, and quantum photonics. Harnessing SBS and FWM in a low-loss and versatile integrated platform would open the path to build large-scale Brillouin/Kerr-based photonic integrated circuits. In this letter, we investigate the Brillouin and Kerr properties of a low-index (n = 1.513 @ 1550 nm) silicon oxynitride (SiON) platform. We observed, for the first time, backward Brillouin scattering in SiON waveguides with a Brillouin gain coefficient of 0.3 m−1 W−1, which can potentially be increased to 0.95 m−1 W−1 by just tailoring the waveguide cross section. We also performed FWM experiments in SiON rings and obtained the nonlinear parameter γ of 0.02 m−1 W−1. Our results point to a low-loss and low-index photonic integrated platform that is both Brillouin and Kerr active.