All-optical switching using Kerr effect in a silica toroid microcavity

TL;DR

This paper reports the experimental demonstration of low-power all-optical switching using the Kerr effect in silica toroid microcavities, achieving the lowest power among on-chip Kerr switches and further power reduction potential.

Contribution

The study introduces a highly efficient on-chip Kerr switch with record low power consumption and demonstrates power reduction strategies using high-Q modes.

Findings

Achieved on-chip Kerr switching at 2 mW input power.

Reduced switching power to tens of microWatts with higher Q factor modes.

Demonstrated the smallest power among all reported on-chip Kerr switches.

Abstract

We demonstrate experimentally an all-optical switching operation using the Kerr effect in a silica toroid microcavity. Thanks to the small mode volume and high quality factor of the silica toroid microcavity, we achieved on-chip optical Kerr switching with an input power of 2 mW. This value is the smallest among all previously reported on-chip optical Kerr switches. We also show that this value can be reduced to a few tens of uW by employing a mode with a Q factor of >2x10^7.