Nonlinear Integrated Silicon Photonics

Abstract

Silicon photonics offer a tight integration of a variety of active and passive optical and electrical components, and gained so much interest in the last decade that it is now considered one of the most promising technology for photonics applications [1]. Building on the mature fabrication techniques first developed for microelectronics allows creating photonic integrated circuits (PICs) with a high density of optical components, in high volumes and at low costs.
However, integrated components of a PIC can experiment unintentional reflections from various possible interfaces such as active and passive transitions, waveguide crossings, regrowth interfaces, or process imperfections. Unwanted reflections may travel back into the laser cavity resulting in a variety of nonlinear dynamics arising under five distinct regimes, depending on feedback strength and cavity length [2]. In most cases, the feedback levels corresponding to such reflections can cause deleterious effects such as linewidth broadening, mode hopping, and/or increased amplitude noise, which is detrimental to most data communication systems. Lasers integrated with a silicon photonic chip are particularly susceptible to these deleterious effects, as the low loss waveguides and high index contrast inherent to the platform are particularly conducive to the creation of strong unintentional feedback [3].  
This talk aims at analyzing the non-linear dynamics of hybrid III-V/Si semiconductor lasers (both Fabry-Perot and DFB) when subject to various optical feedbacks conditions. Results will show the impact of such parasitic reflections on the communication system as well as on the laser dynamics [4]. In the latter, a bandwidth chaos enhancement will be unveiled in a hybrid III-V/Si DFB laser operating under dual optical feedback, which is of outmost importance for the design of chaotic hybrid emitters integrated on a PIC [5].
 
References
[1] Thomson, D. et al., Roadmap of Silicon Photonics, IOP Journal of Optics, 18, pp. 073003, (2016)
[2] Dal Bosco, et al. A. K., Cycles of self-pulsations in a photonic integrated circuit, Physical Review E,  92, pp. 062905, (2015)
[3] Liu, A. et al., Reflection sensitivity of 1.3 μm quantum dot lasers epitaxially grown on silicon, in press, Optics Express, (2017)
[4] Schires, K. et al., Dynamics of Hybrid III-V Silicon Semiconductor Lasers for Integrated Photonics, IEEE J. of Selected Topics in Quant. Electron. 22, 1800107 (2016)
[5] Gomez, S. et al., Wideband Chaos in Hybrid III-V/silicon Distributed Feedback Semiconductor Lasers under Optical Feedback, SPIE Photonics West, (2017)
 
 

Biography

Frédéric Grillot was born in Versailles, France, on August 22, 1974. He received the M.Sc. degree from the University of Dijon, France, 1999, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Besançon, France, in 2003. His doctoral research activities were conducted within the optical component research department in Alcatel-Lucent working on the effects of the optical feedback dynamics in semiconductor lasers, and the impact this phenomenon has on communication systems. From 2003 to 2004, he was with the Institut d’Electronique Fondamentale (University Paris-Sud) where he focused on integrated optics modeling and on Si-based passive devices for optical interconnects. From September 2004 to September 2012, he was working with the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées as an Assistant Professor. From 2008 to 2009, he was also a Visiting Professor at the University of New-Mexico, Albuquerque, USA, leading research in optoelectronics at the Center for High Technology Materials. Since October 2012, he has been working with Telecom Paristech (alias Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications), Paris, France where he became Associate Professor then Full Professor in January 2017. Since August 2015, he has also been serving as a Research Professor at the University of New-Mexico. In April 2017, he joined the Electrical Engineering department at the University of California at Los Angeles as a visiting Professor teaching dynamics of lasers and doing research in mesoscopic optics and quantum electronics. Dr. Grillot is the author or coauthor of 77 journal papers, one book, three book chapters, and more than 170 contributions in international conferences and workshops. His current research interests include advanced quantum confineddevices using new materials such as quantum dots and dashes, light emitters based on intersubband transitions, nonlinear dynamics and optical chaos in semiconductor lasers systems as well as microwave and silicon photonics applications including photonic clocks and photonic analog to digital converters. He is an Associate Editor for Optics Express, Senior Member of the SPIE and of the IEEE Photonics Society, as well as a Member of the OSA