All-Optical Wavelength Conversion Based on Four-Wave Mixing in Dispersion-Engineered Silicon Nanowaveguides

We demonstrate experimentally all-optical wavelength conversion based on four-wave mixing in dispersion-engineered silicon nanowaveguides with a picosecond pulse pump. We find that the conversion efficiency is significantly limited by nonlinear losses induced by the two-photon absorption and freecarrier absorption. Using a picosecond pulse pump centered at 1,550 nm, we show that the input continuous-wave signals can efficiently be converted into a broadband idler pulse in silicon waveguides with various dimensions. Conversion efficiencies versus signal wavelengths are different for silicon waveguides with different dimensions due to the variation in the phase mismatch; we obtain a conversion efficiency of – 32 dB in silicon nanowaveguides with a length of 5.8 mm. Such on-chip optical wavelength converters can find important potential applications in highly-integrated optical circuits for all-optical ultrafast signal processing.