Steve Madden

Ultrafast all-optical chalcogenide glass photonic circuits

Chalcogenide glasses offer large ultrafast third-order nonlinearities, combined with low two-photon absorption and absence of free carrier absorption in a photosensitivity medium. We review the key properties of these materials, including the strong photosensitivity and focus on several recent demonstrations of ultra-fast all-optical signal processing: optical time division multiplexing, all-optical signal regeneration and wavelength conversion.

Supercontinuum generation in dispersion engineered highly nonlinear (y=10/W/m) As2S3 chalcogenide planar waveguide

We demonstrate supercontinuum generation in a highly nonlinear As(2)S(3) chalcogenide planar waveguide which is dispersion engineered to have anomalous dispersion at near-infrared wavelengths. This waveguide is 60 mm long with a cross-section of 2 mum by 870 nm, resulting in a nonlinear parameter of 10 /W/m and a dispersion of +29 ps/nm/km. Using pulses with a width of 610 fs and peak power of 68 W, we generate supercontinuum with a 30 dB bandwidth of 750 nm, in good agreement with theory.

Long, low loss etched As(2)S(3) chalcogenide waveguides for all-optical signal regeneration.

We report on the fabrication and optical properties of etched highly nonlinear As(2)S(3) chalcogenide planar rib waveguides with lengths up to 22.5 cm and optical losses as low as 0.05 dB/cm at 1550 nm - the lowest ever reported. We demonstrate strong spectral broadening of 1.2 ps pulses, in good agreement with simulations, and find that the ratio of nonlinearity and dispersion linearizes the pulse chirp, reducing the spectral oscillations caused by self-phase modulation alone. When combined with a spectrally offset band-pass filter, this gives rise to a nonlinear transfer function suitable for all-optical regeneration of high data rate signals.

Breakthrough switching speed with an all-optical chalcogenide glass chip: 640 Gbit/s demultiplexing

We report the first demonstration of error-free 640 Gbit/s demultiplexing using the Kerr non-linearity of an only 5 cm long chalcogenide glass waveguide chip. Our approach exploits four-wave mixing by the instantaneous nonlinear response of chalcogenide. Excellent performance is achieved with only 2 dB average power penalty and no indication of error-floor. Characterisation of the FWM efficiency for the chalcogenide waveguide is given and confirms the good performance of the device.

Applications of Highly-Nonlinear Chalcogenide Glass Devices Tailored for High-Speed All-Optical Signal Processing

Ultrahigh nonlinear tapered fiber and planar rib Chalcogenide waveguides have been developed to enable highspeed all-optical signal processing in compact, low-loss optical devices through the use of four-wave mixing (FWM) and cross-phase modulation (XPM) via the ultra fast Kerr effect. Tapering a commercial As2Se3 fiber is shown to reduce its effective core area and enhance the Kerr nonlinearity thereby enabling XPM wavelength conversion of a 40 Gb/s signal in a shorter 16-cm length device that allows a broader wavelength tuning range due to its smaller net chromatic dispersion. Progress toward photonic chip-scale devices is shown by fabricating As2S3 planar rib waveguides exhibiting nonlinearity up to 2080 W-1ldr km-1 and losses as low as 0.05 dB/cm. The materials high refractive index, ensuring more robust confinement of the optical mode, permits a more compact serpentine-shaped rib waveguide of 22.5 cm length on a 7-cm- size chip, which is successfully applied to broadband wavelength conversion of 40-80 Gb/s signals by XPM. A shorter 5-cm length planar waveguide proves most effective for all-optical time-division demultiplexing of a 160 Gb/s signal by FWM and analysis shows its length is near optimum for maximizing FWM in consideration of its dispersion and loss.

Properties of GexAsySe1-x-y glasses for all-optical signal processing.

We present a systematic study of Ge(x)As(y)Se(1-x-y) bulk chalcogenide glasses to determine the best composition for fabricating all-optical devices. The dependence of physical parameters such as the band-gap, glass transition temperature and third order optical nonlinearity (n(2)) on composition has been studied and a relation between the bond-structure and elevated linear loss levels in high Germanium glasses has been identified. It is found that glasses with 11

Mid-infrared supercontinuum generation in chalcogenides

Yi Yu acknowledges the financial support from the China Scholarship Council for her PhD Scholarship No. 201206110048. This research was conducted by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Ultrahigh Bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (project number CE110001018). Dr Zhiyong Yang is supported by ARC DECRA project DE120101036 and Dr Duk-Yong Choi by ARC Future Fellowship FT110100853.

Progress in optical waveguides fabricated from chalcogenide glasses

We review the fabrication processes and properties of waveguides that have been made from chalcogenide glasses including highly nonlinear waveguides developed for all-optical processing.

Low-loss chalcogenide waveguides for chemical sensing in the mid-infrared.

We report the characteristics of low-loss chalcogenide waveguides for sensing in the mid-infrared (MIR). The waveguides consisted of a Ge₁₁.₅As₂₄Se₆₄.₅ rib waveguide core with a 10nm fluoropolymer coating on a Ge₁₁.₅As₂₄S₆₄.₅ bottom cladding and were fabricated by thermal evaporation, photolithography and ICP plasma etching. Over most of the functional group band from 1500 to 4000 cm⁻¹ the losses were < 1 dB/cm with a minimum of 0.3 dB/cm at 2000 cm⁻¹. The basic capabilities of these waveguides for spectroscopy were demonstrated by measuring the absorption spectrum of soluble Prussian blue in Dimethyl Sulphoxide.

Photonic chip based tunable and reconfigurable narrowband microwave photonic filter using stimulated Brillouin scattering

We report the first demonstration of a photonic chip based dynamically reconfigurable, widely tunable, narrow pass-band, high Q microwave photonic filter (MPF). We exploit stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) in a 6.5 cm long chalcogenide (As2S3) photonic chip to demonstrate a MPF that exhibited a high quality factor of ~520 and narrow bandwidth and was dynamically reconfigurable and widely tunable. It maintained a stable 3 dB bandwidth of 23 ± 2MHz and amplitude of 20 ± 2 dB over a large frequency tuning range of 2-12 GHz. By tailoring the pump spectrum, we reconfigured the 3 dB bandwidth of the MPF from ~20 MHz to ~40 MHz and tuned the shape factor from 3.5 to 2 resulting in a nearly flat-topped filter profile. This demonstration represents a significant advance in integrated microwave photonics with potential applications in on-chip microwave signal processing for RADAR and analogue communications.