Physical origin of higher-order soliton fission in nanophotonic semiconductor waveguides

Supercontinuum generation in Kerr media has become a staple of nonlinear optics. It has been celebrated for advancing the understanding of soliton propagation as well as its many applications in a broad range of fields. Coherent spectral broadening of laser light is now commonly performed in laborat...

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Autores principales: Ciret, Charles, Gorza, Simon-Pierre, Husko, Chad, Roelkens, Gunther, Kuyken, Bart, Leo, François
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6249288/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30464320
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-34344-4
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author Ciret, Charles
Gorza, Simon-Pierre
Husko, Chad
Roelkens, Gunther
Kuyken, Bart
Leo, François
author_facet Ciret, Charles
Gorza, Simon-Pierre
Husko, Chad
Roelkens, Gunther
Kuyken, Bart
Leo, François
author_sort Ciret, Charles
collection PubMed
description Supercontinuum generation in Kerr media has become a staple of nonlinear optics. It has been celebrated for advancing the understanding of soliton propagation as well as its many applications in a broad range of fields. Coherent spectral broadening of laser light is now commonly performed in laboratories and used in commercial “white light” sources. The prospect of miniaturizing the technology is currently driving experiments in different integrated platforms such as semiconductor on insulator waveguides. Central to the spectral broadening is the concept of higher-order soliton fission. While widely accepted in silica fibers, the dynamics of soliton decay in semiconductor waveguides is yet poorly understood. In particular, the role of nonlinear loss and free carriers, absent in silica, remains an open question. Here, through experiments and simulations, we show that nonlinear loss is the dominant perturbation in wire waveguides, while free-carrier dispersion is dominant in photonic crystal waveguides.
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spelling pubmed-62492882018-11-28 Physical origin of higher-order soliton fission in nanophotonic semiconductor waveguides Ciret, Charles Gorza, Simon-Pierre Husko, Chad Roelkens, Gunther Kuyken, Bart Leo, François Sci Rep Article Supercontinuum generation in Kerr media has become a staple of nonlinear optics. It has been celebrated for advancing the understanding of soliton propagation as well as its many applications in a broad range of fields. Coherent spectral broadening of laser light is now commonly performed in laboratories and used in commercial “white light” sources. The prospect of miniaturizing the technology is currently driving experiments in different integrated platforms such as semiconductor on insulator waveguides. Central to the spectral broadening is the concept of higher-order soliton fission. While widely accepted in silica fibers, the dynamics of soliton decay in semiconductor waveguides is yet poorly understood. In particular, the role of nonlinear loss and free carriers, absent in silica, remains an open question. Here, through experiments and simulations, we show that nonlinear loss is the dominant perturbation in wire waveguides, while free-carrier dispersion is dominant in photonic crystal waveguides. Nature Publishing Group UK 2018-11-21 /pmc/articles/PMC6249288/ /pubmed/30464320 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-34344-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Ciret, Charles
Gorza, Simon-Pierre
Husko, Chad
Roelkens, Gunther
Kuyken, Bart
Leo, François
Physical origin of higher-order soliton fission in nanophotonic semiconductor waveguides
title Physical origin of higher-order soliton fission in nanophotonic semiconductor waveguides
title_full Physical origin of higher-order soliton fission in nanophotonic semiconductor waveguides
title_fullStr Physical origin of higher-order soliton fission in nanophotonic semiconductor waveguides
title_full_unstemmed Physical origin of higher-order soliton fission in nanophotonic semiconductor waveguides
title_short Physical origin of higher-order soliton fission in nanophotonic semiconductor waveguides
title_sort physical origin of higher-order soliton fission in nanophotonic semiconductor waveguides
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6249288/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30464320
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-34344-4
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