Direct thermo-optical tuning of silicon photonic devices (Conference Presentation)

Paul Chevalier; Lara Koehler; Euijae Shim; Boris Desiatov; Amirhassan Shams-Ansari; Marco Piccardo; Marko Loncar; Michal Lipson; Alexander Gaeta; Federico Capasso

doi:10.1117/12.2510421

4 March 2019 Direct thermo-optical tuning of silicon photonic devices (Conference Presentation)

Paul Chevalier, Lara Koehler, Euijae Shim, Boris Desiatov, Amirhassan Shams-Ansari, Marco Piccardo, Marko Loncar, Michal Lipson, Alexander Gaeta, Federico Capasso

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 10923, Silicon Photonics XIV; 1092309 (2019) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2510421
Event: SPIE OPTO, 2019, San Francisco, California, United States

Abstract

Thanks to its high Kerr non-linearity and its low linear absorption, silicon is a material of choice for optical devices in the mid-infrared (from 3 to 5 microns) such as microresonators. In this wavelength range, the available optical sources such as quantum cascade lasers have a limited tunability. Tuning the refractive index of silicon can be achieved by a temperature change of the chip and has been previously demonstrated on ring resonators using integrated heaters or thermo-electric elements. We present a new method for thermo-optical tuning of silicon devices by directly using the light from a laser diode operating at 450 nm. The blue light focused on the silicon induces a local elevation of temperature and thus the refractive index locally increases. When applying this method on silicon ring resonator, the elevation of temperature leads to a decreasing free-spectral range and thus shift the resonances to lower frequencies. At 4.5 µm we measured a tuning efficiency of 200 MHz per mW of incident light. Numerical simulations of the thermo-optical effect show the locality of this tuning method, and confirm the experimental results. Finally a frequency study of the response of this method is performed and a time constant of the order of the micro-second is measured. In conclusion, we propose a fast, local, and non-invasive method for tuning silicon resonators operating in the mid-infrared that can be extended to any silicon-based device.

Conference Presentation

Citation Download Citation

Paul Chevalier, Lara Koehler, Euijae Shim, Boris Desiatov, Amirhassan Shams-Ansari, Marco Piccardo, Marko Loncar, Michal Lipson, Alexander Gaeta, and Federico Capasso "Direct thermo-optical tuning of silicon photonic devices (Conference Presentation)", Proc. SPIE 10923, Silicon Photonics XIV, 1092309 (4 March 2019); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2510421

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KEYWORDS

Silicon

Silicon photonics

Resonators

Mid-IR

Refractive index

Semiconductor lasers

Absorption

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