Low-loss chip-scale programmable silicon photonic processor

Chip-scale programmable optical signal processors are often used to flexibly manipulate the optical signals for satisfying the demands in various applications,such as lidar,radar,and artificial intelligence.Silicon photonics has unique advantages of ultra-high integration density as well as CMOS compatibility,and thus makes it possible to develop large-scale programmable optical signal processors.The challenge is the high silicon waveguides propagation losses and the high calibration complexity for all tuning elements due to the random phase errors.In this paper,we propose and demonstrate a programmable silicon photonic processor for the first time by introducing low-loss multimode photonic waveguide spirals and low-random-phase-error Mach-Zehnder switches.The present chip-scale programmable silicon photonic processor comprises a 1×4 variable power splitter based on cascaded Mach-Zehnder couplers(MZCs),four Ge/Si photodetectors,four channels of thermally-tunable optical delaylines.Each channel consists of a continuously-tuning phase shifter based on a waveguide spiral with a micro-heater and a digitally-tuning delayline realized with cascaded waveguide-spiral delaylines and MZSs for 5.68 ps time-delay step.Particularly,these waveguide spirals used here are designed to be as wide as 2μm,enabling an ultralow propagation loss of 0.28 dB/cm.Meanwhile,these MZCs and MZSs are designed with 2-μm-wide arm waveguides,and thus the random phase errors in the MZC/MZS arms are negligible,in which case the calibration for these MZSs/MZCs becomes easy and furthermore the power consumption for compensating the phase errors can be reduced greatly.Finally,this programmable silicon photonic processor is demonstrated successfully to verify a number of distinctively different functionalities,including tunable time-delay,microwave photonic beamforming,arbitrary optical signal filtering,and arbitrary waveform generation.

Ultrahigh-resolution on-chip spectrometer with silicon photonic resonators

A compact spectrometer on silicon is proposed and demonstrated with an ultrahigh resolution.It consists of a thermally-tunable ultra-high-Q resonator aiming at ultrahigh resolution and an array of wideband resonators for achieving a broadened working window.The present on-chip spectrometer has a footprint as compact as 0.35 mm^(2),and is realized with standard multi-project-wafer foundry processes.The measurement results show that the on-chip spectrometer has an ultra-high resolution Δλ of 5 pm and a wide working window of 10 nm.The dynamic range defined as the ratio of the working window and the wavelength resolution is as large as 1940,which is the largest for on-chip dispersive spectro-meters to the best of our knowledge.The present high-performance on-chip spectrometer has great potential for high-resolution spectrum measurement in the applications of gas sensing,food monitoring,health analysis,etc.

Ultralow-loss compact silicon photonic waveguide spirals and delay lines

Low-loss and compact optical waveguides are key for realizing various photonic integrated circuits with long onchip delay lines,such as tunable optical delay lines,optical coherence tomography,and optical gyroscopes.In this paper,a low-loss and compact silicon photonic waveguide spiral is proposed by introducing broadened Archimedean spiral waveguides with a tapered Euler S-bend.A 100-cm-long waveguide spiral is realized with a minimal bending radius as small as 10 μm by using a standard 220-nm-thick silicon-on-insulator foundry process,and the measured propagation loss is as low as 0.28 dB/cm.Furthermore,the present waveguide spirals are used to realize a 10-bit tunable optical delay line,which has a footprint as small as 2.2 mm × 5.9 mm and a dynamic range of 5120 ps with a fine resolution of 10 ps.