Mid-Infrared All-Optical Wavelength Conversion of NRZ OOK Signal in Silicon Waveguides

Abstract The escalating demand for data traffic is driving the pursuit of new wavelength bands beyond the conventional telecom windows as a key expansion strategy. The 2 μm waveband is considered a novel communication window with distinct advantages of lower signal loss and broader gain bandwidth. Meanwhile, wavelength conversion is a critical enabler for the next-generation high-speed all-optical networks. In this work, we demonstrate, for the first time, all-optical wavelength conversion of high-speed nonreturn-to-zero on–off keying signals in the 2 μm waveband via four-wave mixing, employing a continuous-wave pump and silicon waveguides fabricated on a standard 340 nm silicon-on-insulator platform. A high conversion efficiency of −12.09 dB is achieved with an input pump power of 21.72 dBm. Facilitated by a pump laser centered at 2008 nm, broadband wavelength conversion is experimentally demonstrated over a conversion span of 314.9 nm. Moreover, wavelength conversion of 10 Gbit/s and 15 Gbit/s data signals is successfully demonstrated, with respective power penalties of 2.56 and 3.95 dB measured at a bit error ratio of 3.8 × 10–3. The promise of the demonstrated mid-infrared wavelength converter for future chip-scale high-speed optical communication is supported by the experimental results.