Optical Bistability in a Tunable Gourd-Shaped Silicon Ring Resonator

Yishu Chen; Jijun Feng; Jian Chen; Haipeng Liu; Shuo Yuan; Song Guo; Qinghua Yu; Heping Zeng

doi:10.3390/nano12142447

Optical Bistability in a Tunable Gourd-Shaped Silicon Ring Resonator

Nanomaterials (Basel). 2022 Jul 17;12(14):2447. doi: 10.3390/nano12142447.

Authors

Yishu Chen¹, Jijun Feng¹, Jian Chen¹, Haipeng Liu¹, Shuo Yuan¹, Song Guo¹, Qinghua Yu², Heping Zeng^{3

4}

Affiliations

¹ Engineering Research Center of Optical Instrument and System, Ministry of Education and Shanghai Key Laboratory of Modern Optical System, School of Optical-Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, 516 Jungong Rd, Shanghai 200093, China.
² Key Laboratory of Intelligent Infrared Perception, Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200083, China.
³ Chongqing Key Laboratory of Precision Optics, Chongqing Institute of East China Normal University, Chongqing 401120, China.
⁴ State Key Laboratory of Precision Spectroscopy, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200241, China.

Abstract

In this study, a tunable gourd-shaped ring resonator is demonstrated to generate optical bistability. The system consists of two sub-rings for a gourd shape configuration with a U-shaped wave guiding pathway. The transfer matrix method and FDTD simulation are used to acquire the spectral characteristics of the system. For the fabricated device, the spectra profile and extinction ratio can be effectively tuned by the microheater above the U-shaped waveguide, which matches with the theoretical results. Due to the gourd structure of the resonator, the light waves in two rings can be cross-coupled with each other, and the optical bistability could come out effectively with the change in the input optical power around 6 mW. The presented optical bistability devices have great application potential in optical information processing such as optical storage, switch and logic operation.

Keywords: gourd-shaped resonator; integrated photonics; nonlinear phenomenon; optical bistability; silicon on insulator.

Grants and funding

This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (11774235, 11933005, 61705130 and 11727812), Shanghai Rising-Star Program (19QA1406100), Program for Professor of Special Appointment (Eastern Scholar) at Shanghai Institutions of Higher Learning, and Open Project Program of the Key Laboratory of Intelligent Infrared Perception, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS-IIRP-2020-02).