Abstract

We report frequency conversion experiments in silicon-on-insulator (SOI) directional couplers. We demonstrate that the evanescent coupling between two subwavelength SOI waveguides is strongly dispersive and significantly modifies modulational instability (MI) spectra through the coupling induced group velocity dispersion (GVD). As the separation between two 380-nm-wide silicon photonic wires decreases, the increasing dispersion of the coupling makes the GVD in the symmetric supermode more normal and suppresses the bandwidth of the MI gain observed for larger separations.

©2012 Optical Society of America

Coupling induced anomalous group velocity dispersion in nonlinear arrays of silicon photonic wires

Christopher J. Benton and Dmitry V. Skryabin
Opt. Express 17(7) 5879-5884 (2009)

Modulational instability of discrete solitons in coupled waveguides with group velocity dispersion

A.V. Yulin, D.V. Skryabin, and A.G. Vladimirov
Opt. Express 14(25) 12347-12352 (2006)

Group index and group velocity dispersion in silicon-on-insulator photonic wires

Eric Dulkeith, Fengnian Xia, Laurent Schares, William M. J. Green, and Yurii A. Vlasov
Opt. Express 14(9) 3853-3863 (2006)

Supermode dispersion and waveguide-to-slot mode transition in arrays of silicon-on-insulator waveguides

Charles E. de Nobriga, Gareth D. Hobbs, William J. Wadsworth, Jonathan C. Knight, Dmitry V. Skryabin, Antonio Samarelli, Marc Sorel, and Richard M. De La Rue
Opt. Lett. 35(23) 3925-3927 (2010)

Modulation instability in nonlinear positive–negative index couplers with saturable nonlinearity

Patrick Herbert Tatsing, Alidou Mohamadou, Celsus Bouri, Camus Gaston Latchio Tiofack, and Timoleon Crepin Kofane
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 29(12) 3218-3225 (2012)