UC San Diego

Optical parametric process, such as four wave mixing (FWM) is attracted toapplications for comb generation in Wavelength-Division-Multiplexing (WDM) systems based on fiber-optic systems. The other aspect in these years is the technology based on Photonic Integrated Circuit (PIC) with Complementary Metal Oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology, which enhanced the integration of optical components for optical parametric processing is called Silicon photonics. In the current status, most studies on optical parametric processing in telecommunication band is studied in Silicon nitride, due to its lower optical loss (linear loss) and low two-photon absorption (TPA) as a nonlinear loss. However, for the integration of the optical components into the well -developed CMOS process, it is highly desired to generate comb lines with Silicon-based mixers. In this dissertation, we introduce a new track to generate frequency combs through parametric process through silicon mixer. As a result of this approach, wide spectral bandwidth with dense comb lines with coherence is obtained and stabilized from the accessible manner. As a study of mechanism and design aspect, dispersion engineering, phase-matching condition and TPA effect on the silicon mixer are investigated. For the effective FWM, elaborate design for waveguide cross-section and coupling loss composed, and enhanced PIN structure with reverse bias is applied to the system. To wrap up, this dissertation includes the design and experiment of the parametric mixers based on CMOS compatible silicon devise to demonstrate broadband low-noise frequency comb with dense lines.