Abstract

Silicon photonics offers promising low-cost optoelectronic solutions for a wide range of applications from telecommunications and interconnects to optical sensing and biomedical applications. In recent years, rapid progress has been made in developing silicon based light sources. In particular, stimulated Raman scattering has been demonstrated as a successful approach for achieving both amplification and lasing in silicon. In this paper, we present a chip-scale Raman silicon laser and amplifier based on a ring resonator architecture. Lasing threshold and efficiency are significantly improved from the previous experiments [1,2]. Much lower pump power and smaller foot print are needed for the ring resonator amplifier compared to Raman amplifier in linear configuration due to the resonance enhancement effect. The ring resonator based laser and amplifier architecture allows for on-chip integration with other silicon photonics components to provide a monolithic integrated photonic device.

© 2007 IEEE