AREA: (Ex: NOVUS) AVALANCHE-13+ Sep 28-29, 2013

Put paper number here

SILICON PHOTONICS- BREAKTHROUGHS AND APPLICATIONS
Anjali.Torgal Affiliation City, State, Country Girish. Patil Affiliation City, State, Country

ABSTRACT This paper aims at giving a brief description of photonics and studies the use of silicon in photonics. Further it provides glimpses of the recent past and the possible future applications of this technology. It also explores several phenomena like the Kerr and Raman Effect which are of relevance to the study and industrial implementation in the field of silicon photonics. It also precisely explains how energy transfer occurs practically through silicon. The perspective advantages of this technology over the conventional technologies are also illustrated in this paper. INTRODUCTION Photonics Photonics involves the use of radiant energy (such as light), whose fundamental element is the photon. Photonic applications use the photon in the same way that electronic applications use the electron. Devices that run on light have a number of advantages over those that use electricity. Light travels at about 10 times the speed that electricity does, which means (among other things) that data transmitted photonically can travel long distances in a fraction of the time. Furthermore, visible-light and infrared (IR ) beams, unlike electric currents, pass through each other without interacting, so they don't cause interference. A single optical fibre has the capacity to carry three million telephone calls simultaneously. Silicon in photonics Ever since the earliest research on optical circuits, dating back to the 1970s, there have been visions of an optical Superchip containing a variety of integrated optical components to carry out light generation, modulation, manipulation, detection and amplification (Figure1). However, the dominance of silicon as the semiconductor of choice for electronics applications eventually led to the investigation of silicon photonic circuits, primarily because of the potential attraction of integration with electronics in a cost effective manner.[1]The propagation of light through silicon devices is governed by a range of nonlinear optical phenomena including the Kerr effect, the Raman effect, two photon absorption and

interactions between photons and carriers. The presence of nonlinearity is of fundamental importance, as it enables light to interact with light, thus permitting applications such as wavelength conversion and all-optical signal routing, in addition to the passive transmission of light. Silicon photonic devices can be made using existing semiconductor fabrication techniques, and because silicon is already used as the substrate for most integrated circuits, it is possible to create hybrid devices in which the optical and electronic components are integrated onto a single microchip. Consequently, silicon photonics is being actively researched by many electronics manufacturers including IBM and Intel who see it is a means for keeping on track with Moore's Law, by using optical interconnects to provide faster data transfer both between and within microchips. The silicon is usually patterned with submicrometre precision, into micro photonic components. These operate in the infrared, most commonly at the 1.55 micrometre wavelength used by most fibre optic telecommunication systems. The silicon typically lies on top of a layer of silica in what (by analogy with a similar construction in microelectronics) is known as silicon on insulator (SOI). Kerr nonlinearity The refractive index increases with optical intensity. This effect is not especially strong in bulk silicon, but it can be greatly enhanced by using a silicon waveguide to concentrate light into a very small cross-sectional area. This allows nonlinear optical effects to be seen at low powers. The nonlinearity can be enhanced further by using a slot waveguide, in which the high refractive index of the silicon is used to confine light into a central region filled with a strongly nonlinear polymer. It underlies a wide variety of optical phenomena. One example is four wave mixing, which has been applied in silicon to realise both optical parametric amplification and parametric wavelength conversion. Kerr nonlinearity can also cause modulation instability, in which it reinforces deviations from an optical waveform, leading to the generation of spectral-sidebands and the eventual breakup of the waveform into a train of pulses.

Copyright 20xx by ASME

AREA: (Ex: NOVUS) part is approximately 10% of the real part. The influence of TPA is highly disruptive, as it both wastes light, and generates unwanted heat. It can be mitigated, however, either by switching to longer wavelengths (at which the TPA to Kerr ratio drops), or by using slot waveguides (in which the internal nonlinear material has a lower TPA to Kerr ratio). Alternatively, the energy lost through TPA can be partially recovered (as is described below) by extracting it from the generated charge carriers. Considering all the above described useful properties of silicon in its SOI form, it is clear that it functions effectively at the mid-wave, long-wave and very long-wave infrared (THz) ranges.

Figure 1: Silicon-based optoelectronic integrated circuits (OEIC) superchip The Raman Effect Silicon exhibits the Raman Effect, in which a photon is exchanged for a photon with a slightly different energy, corresponding to an excitation or a relaxation of the material. Silicon's Raman transition is dominated by a single, very narrow frequency peak, which is problematic for broadband phenomena such as Raman amplification, but is beneficial for narrowband devices such as Raman lasers Two-photon absorption Silicon exhibits two-photon absorption (TPA), in which a pair of photons can act to excite an electron-hole pair. This process is related to the Kerr effect, and by analogy with complex refractive index, can be thought of as the imaginary-part of a complex Kerr nonlinearity. At the 1.55 micrometre telecommunication wavelength, this imaginary

NOMENCLATURE Put nomenclature here. Put body of the paper here. Put body of the paper here. Put body of the paper here. Put body of the paper here. Put body of the paper here. Put body of the paper here. Put body of the paper here. Put body of the paper here. Put body of the paper here. Put body of the paper here. Put body of the paper here. Put body of the paper here. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Put acknowledgments here. REFERENCES [1] Silicon Photonics The Early Years Graham T. Reed*, William R Headley, C E Jason Png Advanced Technology Institute, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, UK GU2 7XH Put references here.

Copyright 20xx by ASME