Octave-spanning supercontinuum generation in a silicon-rich nitride waveguide

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates octave-spanning supercontinuum generation in silicon-rich nitride waveguides pumped by femtosecond pulses, offering a simpler manufacturing process with tunable mid-infrared output.

Contribution

It introduces a new silicon-rich nitride waveguide platform capable of octave-spanning supercontinuum generation with comparable performance to traditional materials, and explores wave-breaking phenomena and dispersion tuning.

Findings

Octave-spanning supercontinuum achieved in silicon-rich nitride waveguides.

Wave-breaking supercontinuum observed with orthogonal pumping.

Waveguide height effectively tunes mid-infrared dispersive waves.

Abstract

We experimentally show octave-spanning supercontinuum generation in a non-stoichiometric silicon-rich nitride waveguide when pumped by femtosecond pulses from an erbium fiber laser. The pulse energy and bandwidth are comparable to results achieved in stoichiometric silicon nitride waveguides, but our material platform is simpler to manufacture. We also observe wave-breaking supercontinuum generation by using orthogonal pumping in the same waveguide. Additional analysis reveals that the waveguide height is a powerful tuning parameter for generating mid-infrared dispersive waves while keeping the pump in the telecom band.