We propose and experimentally demonstrate a scalable programmable silicon photonic processor for solving differential equations. This processor is composed of an array of ellipital microrings (MRRs) and 16-channels of tunable delaylines. The MRRs is cascaded to offer flat-top filtering response to select/combine/amplitude control the carrier wavelength of the input optical signal. The following sixteen-channel delaylines are realized by 7-bit ultra-low-loss broadened waveguides and low-phase-error Mach-Zehnder interferometer for 0~330.2 ps time-delay with a step of 2.6 ps. By using wavelength division multiplexing and amplitude/phase control techniques, the processor enables parallel signal processing in each channel, offering scalability and programming flexibility. By programming the silicon photonic processor, a reconfigurable intensity differentiator with variable differentiation orders can be achieved. The operation principle is theoretically analyzed and this programmable silicon photonic processor has been demonstrated successfully to verify the first-, second- and third-order intensity differentiator functionality, which can be used in the field of optical computing.
Silicon photonics is recognized as one of the most promising platforms for on-chip optical interconnects. In order to further enhance the on-chip optical-interconnect link capacity, silicon photonic devices for advanced multiplexing technologies have been widely investigated, including wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM), mode-divisionmultiplexing (MDM), as well as the hybrid multiplexing. This paper gives a review for our recent progresses in the development of silicon-based on-chip wavelength/mode-division-multiplexers.
LIDAR on a silicon chip holds strong potentials for LIDAR system solutions featuring low cost, small size, and high robustness. In line with this effort, on-chip circulators are of great interest as they bring significant benefit for system complexity reduction and SNR improvement by enabling the LIDAR transmitter and receiver to share a single common aperture. Here, we present our recent study on passive silicon photonics nonlinear switches as conditional circulators for LIDAR applications. We propose a device implementation to address the nonlinear switch working principle by controlling waveguide nonlinear coefficient using sub-wavelength gratings. This implementation is foundry-compatible using only regular passive silicon waveguide components and are fully demonstrated in the experiment. In addition, we propose a sub-splitting coupler-based switch potentially can achieve a better fabrication tolerance than sub-wavelength grating-based switch. This work builds up signal processing functions in silicon photonics technology for optical communication and sensing applications. In particular, for LIDAR applications, this work contributes to the critical components of important use, and the easy integration with other existing functions such as optical phased arrays and spectral filters pronounces the potential for LIDAR on a silicon chip.
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