Nonlinear absorption and dispersion in fiber-taper-coupled silicon photonic crystal microresonators
Abstract
A technique is demonstrated which efficiently transfers light between a tapered standard single-mode optical fiber and a high-Q, ultra-small mode volume, silicon photonic crystal resonant cavity. Cavity mode quality factors of 47000 are measured, and a total fiber-to-cavity coupling efficiency of 44% is demonstrated. Using this efficient cavity input and output channel, the steady-state nonlinear absorption and dispersion of the photonic crystal cavity is studied. Optical bistability is observed for fiber input powers as low as 250 \mu W, corresponding to a dropped power of 100 \mu W and 3 fJ of stored cavity energy. A high-density effective free-carrier lifetime for these silicon photonic crystal resonators of 0.5 ns is also estimated from power dependent loss and dispersion measurements.
- Publication:
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arXiv e-prints
- Pub Date:
- November 2004
- DOI:
- arXiv:
- arXiv:physics/0412002
- Bibcode:
- 2004physics..12002B
- Keywords:
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- Physics - Optics;
- Condensed Matter - Materials Science
- E-Print:
- Optics Express, Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 801-820, Feb. 7, 2005