⮞ Département SP ⮞ Thématiques de recherche⮞ Activités « Communications Optiques »
Silicon photonics offers solutions to meet the needs of increasing transmission capacities within data centers, by proposing low-cost components with reduced energy consumption, compatible with large-scale production leveraging on industrial microelectronics fabrication processes. Among these components, modulators are key elements whose function is to convert the information to be transmitted from the electrical to the optical domain.
Different silicon modulators structures allow to efficiently modulate the phase and/or the amplitude of an optical wave. A particular attention is paid to silicon ring resonator modulators (RRMs), which are attractive due to their efficiency and their compactness. The frequency chirping properties of RRMs are therefore of paramount importance for such applications. However, they have been to date the object of only a few studies.
The frequency chirping properties of a silicon RRM have been experimentally and numerically characterized by studying the relative phases and peak-to-peak values of the modulated power and phase waveforms under sinusoidal modulation. The temporal phase relations between IM and FM show a π difference for opposite detunings and different values as a function of the wavelength detuning and the modulation frequency, leading to a divergent behavior of the commonly defined chirp parameter as a function of time.
Thus, the frequency chirp was also quantified using a peak- to-peak chirp parameter metric. This study shows that the chirp parameter has higher values at low frequencies and high detunings and is mostly influenced by the peak-to-peak power contribution. This comprehensive investigation provides, for the first time to our knowledge, a better understanding of the peculiar frequency chirping properties of silicon RRMs, which can be used in order to optimize their utilization in high-speed communication applications.
Further work has also demonstrated the generation and optimization of electro-optic frequency combs using similar modulators and optimization algorithms, achieving unprecedented comb-line power flatness and highlighting their potential as multi-wavelength sources for wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) optical communications.
Collaborations
Projets Financés
- Thèse Erwan Weckenmann (2019-2023), financement régional
- Thèse Marin Dupuis (2024-), financement CIFRE
Publications associées
- E. Weckenmann, et al. “Frequency Chirp Characterization of Silicon Ring Resonator Modulators”, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters, 2022, 34 (12), pp.653-656. ⟨10.1109/LPT.2022.3179650⟩.
- E.Weckenmann et al., “Comprehensive frequency chirp characterization of silicon ring resonator modulators”, OSA Advanced Photonics Congress 2020 ITu1A.4 (jul 2020).
- E. Weckenmann, T. Monteiro, U. C. de Moura, F. Da Ros, L. Bramerie, M. Gay, D. Pérez-Galacho, L. Deniel, F. Boeuf, D. Marris-Morini, D. Zibar, and C. Peucheret, “Generation of electro-optic frequency combs with optimized flatness in a silicon ring resonator modulator,” Optics Letters, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1364/OL.507660