Travelling-wave resonant four-wave mixing breaks the limits of cavity-enhanced all-optical wavelength conversion

Morichetti, F., Canciamilla, A., Ferrari, C., Samarelli, A., Sorel, M. and Melloni, A. (2011) Travelling-wave resonant four-wave mixing breaks the limits of cavity-enhanced all-optical wavelength conversion. Nature Communications, 2, p. 296. (doi: 10.1038/ncomms1294)

Abstract

Wave mixing inside optical resonators, while experiencing a large enhancement of the nonlinear interaction efficiency, suffers from strong bandwidth constraints, preventing its practical exploitation for processing broad-band signals. Here we show that such limits are overcome by the new concept of travelling-wave resonant four-wave mixing (FWM). This approach combines the efficiency enhancement provided by resonant propagation with a wide-band conversion process. Compared with conventional FWM in bare waveguides, it exhibits higher robustness against chromatic dispersion and propagation loss, while preserving transparency to modulation formats. Travelling-wave resonant FWM has been demonstrated in silicon-coupled ring resonators and was exploited to realize a 630-μm-long wavelength converter operating over a wavelength range wider than 60 nm and with 28-dB gain with respect to a bare waveguide of the same physical length. Full compatibility of the travelling-wave resonant FWM with optical signal processing applications has been demonstrated through signal retiming and reshaping at 10 Gb s(-1).

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Sorel, Professor Marc and Samarelli, Mr Antonio
• Authors: Morichetti, F., Canciamilla, A., Ferrari, C., Samarelli, A., Sorel, M., and Melloni, A.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Engineering > Electronics and Nanoscale Engineering
• Journal Name: Nature Communications
• ISSN: 2041-1723