Multi-functional integrated photonics in the mid-infrared with suspended AlGaAs on silicon

Published

September 18, 2019

Author(s)

Jeff Chiles, Nima Nader, Eric J. Stanton, Daniel Herman, Galan Moody, Biswarup Guha, Kartik Srinivasan, Scott Diddams, Ian Coddington, Nathan R. Newbury, Jeff Shainline, Sae Woo Nam, Richard Mirin, Jiangang Zhu, Juliet Gopinath, Connor Fredrick

Abstract

The microscale integration of mid- and longwave-infrared photonics could enable the development of fieldable and reliable chemical sensors. The choice of material platform immediately determines the strength and types of optical nonlinearities available, the optical transparency window, modal confinement, and physical robustness. In this work, we demonstrate a new platform, suspended AlGaAs waveguides integrated on silicon, providing excellent performance in all of these metrics. We demonstrate low propagation losses within a span of nearly two octaves (1.26 - 4.6μm) with exemplary performance of 0.45 dB/cm atλ=2.4υm. The strong refractive index contrast enables passive devices such as low-loss 10μm-radius bends,compact power splitters with 96%-efficiency atλ=3.4υm, and edge couplers with 3 dB loss atλ=4.6υm. We exploit the high nonlinearity of this platform to demonstrate 1550 nm- pumped second-harmonic generation and octave-spanning supercontinuum reaching out to 2.3υm with 3.4 pJ pump pulse energy (average power of≅0.5 mW). MIR-pumped supercontinuum spanning from 2.3 - 6.5υm is also achieved. This technology could enable efficient integrated photonic frequency converters operating over a wide window out to the longwave-infrared.

Citation

Optica

Pub Type

Journals

Citation

Chiles, J. , Nader, N. , Stanton, E. , Herman, D. , Moody, G. , Guha, B. , Srinivasan, K. , Diddams, S. , Coddington, I. , Newbury, N. , Shainline, J. , Nam, S. , Mirin, R. , Zhu, J. , Gopinath, J. and Fredrick, C. (2019), Multi-functional integrated photonics in the mid-infrared with suspended AlGaAs on silicon, Optica (Accessed April 28, 2024)