Silicon waveguide with four zero-dispersion wavelengths and its application in on-chip octave-spanning supercontinuum generation

We propose a novel silicon waveguide that exhibits four zerodispersion wavelengths for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, with a flattened dispersion over a 670-nm bandwidth. This holds a great potential for exploration of new nonlinear effects and achievement of ultrabroadband signal processing on a silicon chip. As an example, we show that an octave-spanning supercontinuum assisted by dispersive wave generation can be obtained in silicon, over a wavelength range from 1217 to 2451 nm, almost from bandgap wavelength to half-bandgap wavelength. Input pulse is greatly compressed to 10 fs. © 2012 Optical Society of America.