Bulletin of the American Physical Society
2006 APS March Meeting
Monday–Friday, March 13–17, 2006; Baltimore, MD
Session W6: New Applications of Silicon in Photonics and Biomedicine |
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Sponsoring Units: FIAP Chair: Sharon Weiss, Vanderbilt University Room: Baltimore Convention Center 310 |
Thursday, March 16, 2006 2:30PM - 3:06PM |
W6.00001: TBD Invited Speaker: This abstract has not been submitted electronically. [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, March 16, 2006 3:06PM - 3:42PM |
W6.00002: Prospects of Mid Infrared Silicon Raman Laser Invited Speaker: Mid wave infrared (MWIR) lasers in the wavelength range of 2-5$\mu $m form an important tool for free space communications, bio-chemical detection and certain medical applications. Most organic chemicals and biological agents have unique signatures in the MWIR and can be detected using these lasers. The strong water absorption peak at 2.9$\mu $m renders such a laser attractive for surgery and dentistry. Solid state lasers comprising OPO-based nonlinear frequency converters and Raman lasers have been the popular choice for these applications. However, the low damage threshold, poor thermal conductivity and high cost limit the commercial availability of these sources. The recent demonstration of the first silicon Raman laser in 2004 combined with excellent transmission of silicon in the mid-IR suggests that silicon should be considered as a MWIR Raman crystal. In the near IR, where current silicon Raman lasers operate, free carriers that are generated by two photon absorption (TPA) create severe losses. TPA vanishes in the MWIR regime ($\lambda \quad >$ 2.25$\mu $m), hence eliminating the main problem with silicon Raman lasers. This combined with (i) the unsurpassed quality of commercial silicon crystals, (ii) the low cost and wide availability of the material, (iii) extremely high optical damage threshold of 1-4 GW/cm2 (depending on the crystal resistivity), and (iv) excellent thermal conductivity renders silicon a very attractive Raman crystal. Moreover, integrated waveguide and resonator technologies can lead to device miniaturization. This talk discusses the MWIR silicon laser and its applications. [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, March 16, 2006 3:42PM - 4:18PM |
W6.00003: Invited Speaker: |
Thursday, March 16, 2006 4:18PM - 4:54PM |
W6.00004: Nonlinear Optics in Silicon - Applications in Optical Communication Systems Invited Speaker: Silicon photonics is quickly becoming an important and active research area, primarily because of the desire to leverage existing silicon fabrication technology and the potential for integration with conventional silicon electronic components. In this talk, I will discuss nonlinear optical effects in silicon, and ways in which they can be employed in optical telecommunication systems. The nonlinear effect that we have been exploring is two-photon absorption: a process in which two photons are simultaneously absorbed in a silicon photodiode to generate a single electron-hole pair. Unlike many other nonlinear processes, two-photon absorption does not require phase matching, and can occur over a very broad wavelength range with an ultrafast (fs) response time. In silicon, two-photon absorption can be observed at wavelengths from 1100 to 2200 nm, a range that spans the entire spectrum presently used in fiber telecommunications. For years, two-photon absorption was regarded as a deleterious effect in nonlinear optics, because it consumes the optical signal that was meant to produce a nonlinear phase shift. More recently, researchers have found ways to exploit two-photon absorption effects for optical signal processing. For example, if the electrical carriers produced by two-photon absorption are collected by an en external electrical bias circuit, the resulting photocurrent can be directly used in a number of nonlinear processing functions including optical autocorrelation, cross-correlation, quality monitoring, demultiplexing, optical sampling, and clock recovery. In this presentation, I will review the recent applications of two-photon absorption in communication systems, and describe ongoing research being conducted at the University of Maryland. In particular, we have found an explanation for the polarization dependence that is often observed in two-photon absorption, and we have developed a new way to overcome this dependence. As an example of how two-photon absorption can be used in a real communication system, we have demonstrated an 80 Gb/s optical clock recovery system based upon two-photon absorption in a silicon photodiode, and we deployed the system in a 1000 km fiber transmission experiment. [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, March 16, 2006 4:54PM - 5:30PM |
W6.00005: Invited Speaker: |
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