Abstract

The reflection of light from moving boundaries is of interest both fundamentally and for applications in frequency conversion, but typically requires high pump power. By using a dispersion-engineered silicon photonic crystal waveguide, we are able to achieve a propagating free carrier front with only a moderate on-chip peak power of 6 W in a 6 ps-long pump pulse. We employ an intraband indirect photonic transition of a co-propagating probe, whereby the probe practically escapes from the front in the forward direction. This forward reflection has up to 35% efficiency and it is accompanied by a strong frequency upshift, which significantly exceeds that expected from the refractive index change and which is a function of group velocity, waveguide dispersion and pump power. Pump, probe and shifted probe all are around 1.5 µm wavelength which opens new possibilities for “on-chip” frequency manipulation and all-optical switching in optical telecommunications.

Details

Title
Reflection from a free carrier front via an intraband indirect photonic transition
Author
Gaafar, Mahmoud A 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Jalas, Dirk 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Liam O’Faolain 3 ; Li, Juntao 4 ; Krauss, Thomas F 5   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Alexander Yu Petrov 6   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Eich, Manfred 7 

1  Institute of Optical and Electronic Materials, Hamburg University of Technology, Hamburg, Germany; Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Menoufia University, Menoufia, Egypt 
2  Institute of Optical and Electronic Materials, Hamburg University of Technology, Hamburg, Germany 
3  SUPA, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Fife, UK; Tyndall National Institute, Cork, Ireland; Centre for Advanced Photonics and Process Analysis, Cork Institute of Technology, Cork, Ireland 
4  State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials & Technology, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China 
5  Department of Physics, University of York, York, UK 
6  Institute of Optical and Electronic Materials, Hamburg University of Technology, Hamburg, Germany; ITMO University, St. Petersburg, Russia 
7  Institute of Optical and Electronic Materials, Hamburg University of Technology, Hamburg, Germany; Institute of Materials Research, Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht, Geesthacht, Germany 
Pages
1-10
Publication year
2018
Publication date
Apr 2018
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
e-ISSN
20411723
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-03862-0
ProQuest document ID
2024475653
Copyright
© 2018. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.