3D integration enables ultralow-noise isolator-free lasers in silicon photonics.

Photonic integrated circuits are widely used in applications such as telecommunications and data-centre interconnects1-5. However, in optical systems such as microwave synthesizers6, optical gyroscopes7 and atomic clocks8, photonic integrated circuits are still considered inferior solutions despite their advantages in size, weight, power consumption and cost. Such high-precision and highly coherent applications favour ultralow-noise laser sources to be integrated with other photonic components in a compact and robustly aligned format-that is, on a single chip-for photonic integrated circuits to replace bulk optics and fibres. There are two major issues preventing the realization of such envisioned photonic integrated circuits: the high phase noise of semiconductor lasers and the difficulty of integrating optical isolators directly on-chip. Here we challenge this convention by leveraging three-dimensional integration that results in ultralow-noise lasers with isolator-free operation for silicon photonics. Through multiple monolithic and heterogeneous processing sequences, direct on-chip integration of III-V gain medium and ultralow-loss silicon nitride waveguides with optical loss around 0.5 decibels per metre are demonstrated. Consequently, the demonstrated photonic integrated circuit enters a regime that gives rise to ultralow-noise lasers and microwave synthesizers without the need for optical isolators, owing to the ultrahigh-quality-factor cavity. Such photonic integrated circuits also offer superior scalability for complex functionalities and volume production, as well as improved stability and reliability over time. The three-dimensional integration on ultralow-loss photonic integrated circuits thus marks a critical step towards complex systems and networks on silicon.

Correlated self-heterodyne method for ultra-low-noise laser linewidth measurements.

Narrow-linewidth lasers are important to many applications spanning precision metrology to sensing systems. Characterization of these lasers requires precise measurements of their frequency noise spectra. Here we demonstrate a correlated self-heterodyne (COSH) method capable of measuring frequency noise as low as 0.01 Hz2/Hz at 1 MHz offset frequency. The measurement setup is characterized by both commercial and lab-built lasers, and features low optical power requirements, fast acquisition time and high intensity noise rejection.

Seamless multi-reticle photonics.

While Moore's law predicted shrinking transistors would enable exponential scaling of electronic circuits, the footprint of photonic components is limited by the wavelength of light. Thus, future high-complexity photonic integrated circuits (PICs) such as petabit-per-second transceivers, thousand-channel switches, and photonic quantum computers will require more area than a single reticle provides. In our novel approach, we overlay and widen waveguides in adjacent reticles to stitch a smooth transition between misaligned exposures. In SiN waveguides, we measure ultralow loss of 0.0004 dB per stitch, and produce a stitched delay line 23 m in length. We extend the design to silicon channel waveguides, and predict 50-fold lower loss or 50-fold smaller footprint versus a multimode-waveguide-based method. Our approach enables large-scale PICs to scale seamlessly beyond the single-reticle limit.

Reaching fiber-laser coherence in integrated photonics.

We self-injection-lock a diode laser to a 1.41 m long, ultra-high Q integrated resonator. The hybrid integrated laser reaches a frequency noise floor of 0.006Hz2/Hz at 4 MHz offset, corresponding to a Lorentzian linewidth below 40 mHz-a record among semiconductor lasers. It also exhibits exceptional stability at low-offset frequencies, with frequency noise of 200Hz2/Hz at 100 Hz offset. Such performance, realized in a system comprised entirely of integrated photonic chips, marks a milestone in the development of integrated photonics; and, for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, exceeds the frequency noise performance of commercially available, high-performance fiber lasers.

Multimodality integrated microresonators using the Moiré speedup effect.

High-Q microresonators are indispensable components of photonic integrated circuits and offer several useful operational modes. However, these modes cannot be reconfigured after fabrication because they are fixed by the resonator's physical geometry. In this work, we propose a Moiré speedup dispersion tuning method that enables a microresonator device to operate in any of three modes. Electrical tuning of Vernier coupled rings switches operating modality to Brillouin laser, bright microcomb, and dark microcomb operation on demand using the same hybrid-integrated device. Brillouin phase matching and microcomb operation across the telecom C-band is demonstrated. Likewise, by using a single-pump wavelength, the operating mode can be switched. As a result, one universal design can be applied across a range of applications. The device brings flexible mixed-mode operation to integrated photonic circuits.

Chip-based laser with 1-hertz integrated linewidth.

Lasers with hertz linewidths at time scales of seconds are critical for metrology, timekeeping, and manipulation of quantum systems. Such frequency stability relies on bulk-optic lasers and reference cavities, where increased size is leveraged to reduce noise but with the trade-off of cost, hand assembly, and limited applications. Alternatively, planar waveguide-based lasers enjoy complementary metal-oxide semiconductor scalability yet are fundamentally limited from achieving hertz linewidths by stochastic noise and thermal sensitivity. In this work, we demonstrate a laser system with a 1-s linewidth of 1.1 Hz and fractional frequency instability below 10-14 to 1 s. This low-noise performance leverages integrated lasers together with an 8-ml vacuum-gap cavity using microfabricated mirrors. All critical components are lithographically defined on planar substrates, holding potential for high-volume manufacturing. Consequently, this work provides an important advance toward compact lasers with hertz linewidths for portable optical clocks, radio frequency photonic oscillators, and related communication and navigation systems.

A continuous-wave Raman silicon laser.

Achieving optical gain and/or lasing in silicon has been one of the most challenging goals in silicon-based photonics because bulk silicon is an indirect bandgap semiconductor and therefore has a very low light emission efficiency. Recently, stimulated Raman scattering has been used to demonstrate light amplification and lasing in silicon. However, because of the nonlinear optical loss associated with two-photon absorption (TPA)-induced free carrier absorption (FCA), until now lasing has been limited to pulsed operation. Here we demonstrate a continuous-wave silicon Raman laser. Specifically, we show that TPA-induced FCA in silicon can be significantly reduced by introducing a reverse-biased p-i-n diode embedded in a silicon waveguide. The laser cavity is formed by coating the facets of the silicon waveguide with multilayer dielectric films. We have demonstrated stable single mode laser output with side-mode suppression of over 55 dB and linewidth of less than 80 MHz. The lasing threshold depends on the p-i-n reverse bias voltage and the laser wavelength can be tuned by adjusting the wavelength of the pump laser. The demonstration of a continuous-wave silicon laser represents a significant milestone for silicon-based optoelectronic devices.

An all-silicon Raman laser.

The possibility of light generation and/or amplification in silicon has attracted a great deal of attention for silicon-based optoelectronic applications owing to the potential for forming inexpensive, monolithic integrated optical components. Because of its indirect bandgap, bulk silicon shows very inefficient band-to-band radiative electron-hole recombination. Light emission in silicon has thus focused on the use of silicon engineered materials such as nanocrystals, Si/SiO2 superlattices, erbium-doped silicon-rich oxides, surface-textured bulk silicon and Si/SiGe quantum cascade structures. Stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) has recently been demonstrated as a mechanism to generate optical gain in planar silicon waveguide structures. In fact, net optical gain in the range 2-11 dB due to SRS has been reported in centimetre-sized silicon waveguides using pulsed pumping. Recently, a lasing experiment involving silicon as the gain medium by way of SRS was reported, where the ring laser cavity was formed by an 8-m-long optical fibre. Here we report the experimental demonstration of Raman lasing in a compact, all-silicon, waveguide cavity on a single silicon chip. This demonstration represents an important step towards producing practical continuous-wave optical amplifiers and lasers that could be integrated with other optoelectronic components onto CMOS-compatible silicon chips.

High-performance lasers for fully integrated silicon nitride photonics.

Silicon nitride (SiN) waveguides with ultra-low optical loss enable integrated photonic applications including low noise, narrow linewidth lasers, chip-scale nonlinear photonics, and microwave photonics. Lasers are key components to SiN photonic integrated circuits (PICs), but are difficult to fully integrate with low-index SiN waveguides due to their large mismatch with the high-index III-V gain materials. The recent demonstration of multilayer heterogeneous integration provides a practical solution and enabled the first-generation of lasers fully integrated with SiN waveguides. However, a laser with high device yield and high output power at telecommunication wavelengths, where photonics applications are clustered, is still missing, hindered by large mode transition loss, non-optimized cavity design, and a complicated fabrication process. Here, we report high-performance lasers on SiN with tens of milliwatts output power through the SiN waveguide and sub-kHz fundamental linewidth, addressing all the aforementioned issues. We also show Hertz-level fundamental linewidth lasers are achievable with the developed integration techniques. These lasers, together with high-Q SiN resonators, mark a milestone towards a fully integrated low-noise silicon nitride photonics platform. This laser should find potential applications in LIDAR, microwave photonics and coherent optical communications.

A high-speed silicon optical modulator based on a metal-oxide-semiconductor capacitor.

Silicon has long been the optimal material for electronics, but it is only relatively recently that it has been considered as a material option for photonics. One of the key limitations for using silicon as a photonic material has been the relatively low speed of silicon optical modulators compared to those fabricated from III-V semiconductor compounds and/or electro-optic materials such as lithium niobate. To date, the fastest silicon-waveguide-based optical modulator that has been demonstrated experimentally has a modulation frequency of only approximately 20 MHz (refs 10, 11), although it has been predicted theoretically that a approximately 1-GHz modulation frequency might be achievable in some device structures. Here we describe an approach based on a metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) capacitor structure embedded in a silicon waveguide that can produce high-speed optical phase modulation: we demonstrate an all-silicon optical modulator with a modulation bandwidth exceeding 1 GHz. As this technology is compatible with conventional complementary MOS (CMOS) processing, monolithic integration of the silicon modulator with advanced electronics on a single silicon substrate becomes possible.

Resonant normal-incidence separate-absorption-charge-multiplication Ge/Si avalanche photodiodes.

In this work the impedance of separate-absorption-charge-multiplication Ge/Si avalanche photodiodes (APD) is characterized over a large range of bias voltage. An equivalent circuit with an inductive element is presented for modeling the Ge/Si APD. All the parameters for the elements included in the equivalent circuit are extracted by fitting the measured S(22) with the genetic algorithm optimization. Due to a resonance in the avalanche region, the frequency response of the APD has a peak enhancement when the bias voltage is relatively high, which is observed in the measurement and agrees with the theoretical calculation shown in this paper.

Frequency response and bandwidth enhancement in Ge/Si avalanche photodiodes with over 840 GHz gain-bandwidth-product.

In this work we report a separate-absorption-charge-multiplication Ge/Si avalanche photodiode with an enhanced gain-bandwidth-product of 845 GHz at a wavelength of 1310 nm. The corresponding gain value is 65 and the electrical bandwidth is 13 GHz at an optical input power of -30 dBm. The unconventional high gain-bandwidth-product is investigated using device physical simulation and optical pulse response measurement. The analysis of the electric field distribution, electron and hole concentration and drift velocities in the device shows that the enhanced gain-bandwidth-product at high bias voltages is due to a decrease of the transit time and avalanche build-up time limitation at high fields.

Characterization of efficient wavelength conversion by four-wave mixing in sub-micron silicon waveguides.

We characterize silicon waveguide based wavelength converters using a commercial semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) based wavelength converter as a benchmark. Conversion efficiency as high as -5.5 dB can be achieved using a 2.5 cm long sub-micron silicon-on-insulator rib waveguide. Comparison with the SOA reveals that silicon offers broader conversion bandwidth, higher OSNR, and negligible channel crosstalk. The impact of two-photon absorption and free carrier absorption on the conversion efficiency and the dependence of the efficiency on the rib waveguide dimensions are investigated theoretically. Using a nonlinear index coefficient of 4x10(-14) cm(2)/W for silicon, we obtain good agreement between simulations and measurements.

A racetrack mode-locked silicon evanescent laser.

By utilizing a racetrack resonator topography, an on-chip mode locked silicon evanescent laser (ML-SEL) is realized that is independent of facet polishing. This enables integration with other devices on silicon and precise control of the ML-SEL's repetition rate through lithographic definition of the cavity length. Both passive and hybrid mode-locking have been achieved with transform limited, 7 ps pulses emitted at a repetition rate of 30 GHz. Jitter and locking range are measured under hybrid mode locking with a minimum absolute jitter and maximum locking range of 364 fs, and 50 MHz, respectively.

Raman amplification of 40 Gb/s data in low-loss silicon waveguides.

We demonstrate on-chip Raman amplification of an optical data signal at 40 Gb/s in a silicon-on-insulator p-i-n rib waveguide. Using 230 mW of coupled pump power, on/off gain of up to 2.3 dB is observed, while signal integrity is maintained. In addition, the gain is measured as a function of signal wavelength detuning from the Stokes wavelength. The Lorentzian linewidth of the Raman gain profile is determined to be approximately 80 GHz. This provides applicability for the selective amplification of individual DWDM optical channels.

High-speed optical modulation based on carrier depletion in a silicon waveguide.

We present a high-speed and highly scalable silicon optical modulator based on the free carrier plasma dispersion effect. The fast refractive index modulation of the device is due to electric-field-induced carrier depletion in a Silicon-on-Insulator waveguide containing a reverse biased pn junction. To achieve high-speed performance, a travelling-wave design is used to allow co-propagation of electrical and optical signals along the waveguide. We demonstrate high-frequency modulator optical response with 3 dB bandwidth of ~20 GHz and data transmission up to 30 Gb/s. Such high-speed data transmission capability will enable silicon modulators to be one of the key building blocks for integrated silicon photonic chips for next generation communication networks as well as future high performance computing applications.

Integrated AlGaInAs-silicon evanescent race track laser and photodetector.

Here we report a racetrack resonator laser integrated with two photo-detectors on the hybrid AlGaInAs-silicon evanescent device platform. Unlike previous demonstrations of hybrid AlGaInAs-silicon evanescent lasers, we demonstrate an on-chip racetrack resonator laser that does not rely on facet polishing and dicing in order to define the laser cavity. The laser runs continuous-wave (c.w.) at 1590 nm with a threshold of 175 mA, has a maximum total output power of 29 mW and a maximum operating temperature of 60 C. The output of this laser light is directly coupled into a pair of on chip hybrid AlGaInAs-silicon evanescent photodetectors used to measure the laser output.

A hybrid AlGaInAs-silicon evanescent preamplifier and photodetector.

We report the integration of a hybrid silicon evanescent waveguide photodetector with a hybrid silicon evanescent optical amplifier. The device operates at 1550 nm with a responsivity of 5.7 A/W and a receiver sensitivity of -17.5 dBm at 2.5 Gb/s. The transition between the passive silicon waveguide and the hybrid waveguide of the amplifier is tapered to increase coupling efficiency and to minimize reflections.

31 GHz Ge n-i-p waveguide photodetectors on Silicon-on-Insulator substrate.

We report on evanescently coupled Ge waveguide photodetectors that are grown on top of Si rib waveguides. A Ge waveguide detector with a width of 7.4mum and length of 50 mum demonstrated an optical bandwidth of 31.3 GHz at -2V for 1550nm. In addition, a responsivity of 0.89 A/W at 1550 nm and dark current of 169 nA were measured from this detector at -2V. A higher responsivity of 1.16 A/W was also measured from a longer Ge waveguide detector (4.4 x 100 mum2), with a corresponding bandwidth of 29.4 GHz at -2V. An open eye diagram at 40 Gb/s is also shown.

A hybrid AlGaInAs-silicon evanescent waveguide photodetector.

We report a waveguide photodetector utilizing a hybrid waveguide structure consisting of AlGaInAs quantum wells bonded to a silicon waveguide. The light in the hybrid waveguide is absorbed by the AlGaInAs quantum wells under reverse bias. The photodetector has a fiber coupled responsivity of 0.31 A/W with an internal quantum efficiency of 90 % over the 1.5 mum wavelength range. This photodetector structure can be integrated with silicon evanescent lasers for power monitors or integrated with silicon evanescent amplifiers for preamplified receivers.