A comprehensive theoretical model for on-chip microring-based photonic fractional differentiators

Microring-based photonic fractional differentiators play an important role in the on-chip all-optical signal processing. Unfortunately, the previous works do not consider the time-reversal and the time delay characteristics of the microring-based fractional differentiator. They also do not include the effect of input pulse width on the output. In particular, it cannot explain why the microring-based differentiator with the differentiation order n > 1 has larger output deviation than that with n < 1, and why the microring-based differentiator cannot reproduce the three-peak output waveform of an ideal differentiator with n > 1. In this paper, a comprehensive theoretical model is proposed. The critically-coupled microring resonator is modeled as an ideal first-order differentiator, while the under-coupled and over-coupled resonators are modeled as the time-reversed ideal fractional differentiators. Traditionally, the over-coupled microring resonators are used to form the differentiators with 1 < n < 2. However, we demonstrate that smaller fitting error can be obtained if the over-coupled microring resonator is fitted by an ideal differentiator with n < 1. The time delay of the differentiator is also considered. Finally, the influences of some key factors on the output waveform and deviation are discussed. The proposed theoretical model is beneficial for the design and application of the microring-based fractional differentiators.