Four-Wave Mixing in Silicon Waveguides for Mid-Infrared Applications

Sanja Zlatanovic
University of California, San Diego

Wednesday, July 14, 2010 at 3:00pm
Engr IV Maxwell Room 57-124

Abstract

Mid-IR sources are essential for applications such as free-space communication, light detection and ranging (LIDAR), chemical and biological sensing and infrared spectroscopy. Optical parametric oscillators (OPOs) have been widely used in this spectral range, but there has been a considerable interest to develop more compact Mid-IR sources. Silicon could potentially be an attractive parametric nonlinear optics platform for applications where a mid-infrared (MidIR) source is of vital importance. The spectral region beyond 2 ?m is of interest for silicon four-wave mixing (FWM) since two-photon absorption (TPA) and the resulting free-carrier absorption (FCA) are reduced at these wavelengths. This talk will focus on a tunable chip-scale Mid-IR source that combines a silicon mixer and a compact short-wave infrared (SWIR) fiber source. The SWIR source is derived from the telecom band by four-wave mixing in a tightly spooled highly nonlinear fiber (NHLF), enabling ultra-compact design. This unique combination of fiber and chip-scale devices can be used to construct a Mid-IR tunable source capable of narrow linewidth operation that supports different modulation formats.

Biography
Sanja Zlatanovic received B.S. in Electrical Engineering from University of Belgrade in 1998, M.S. in Bioengineering and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from University of California San Diego in 2002 and 2008, respectively. She worked for Genoptix and Agilent Laboratories. In 2008 she joined Photonic Systems Group where she currently works as an assistant project scientist. Her research interests include silicon photonic devices for optical communications and sensing, and parametric processes in mid-infrared.