Eur. Phys. J. D 65, 547-551 (2011)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2011-20376-8

Regular Article

Sub-picosecond pulse generation using hybrid silicon and GaInP waveguides

¹ Chongqing Key Laboratory of Optical Engineering, Chongqing Normal University, Chongqing 400047, P.R. China
² MicroPhotonics Advanced Research Center, School of Information and Communication Engineering, INHA University, 253 Yonghyun-Dong, Nam-Gu, Incheon 402-751, Republic of Korea
³ State Key Laboratory of Information Photonics and Optical Communications, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing 100876, P.R. China

^a e-mail: jwwu05@gmail.com

Received: 25 June 2011
Received in final form: 1 September 2011
Published online: 25 November 2011

Abstract

In this paper, a method for generating ultra-short optical pulses in the sub-picosecond regime is presented and numerically demonstrated using a nonlinear nanoporous silicon waveguide followed by a Mach-Zehnder interferometer configuration based on the GaInP photonic crystal waveguide. Research results show that an optimal output pulse with sub-picosecond time duration can be achieved from  ~16.65-ps input pulses by selecting suitable system parameters such as initial intensity and waveguide length which will significantly influence the optical properties of the output pulse, including its time domain waveform, frequency spectrum, and phase chirp. The time duration of the corresponding autocorrelation trace can also reach as little as  ~1.0-ps at the end of the device.