Optical autocorrelation performance of silicon wire p-i-n waveguides utilizing the enhanced two-photon absorption.

Optical autocorrelation accuracy was for the first time analyzed for the silicon waveguide based autocorrelators utilizing two-photon absorption (TPA) under various short pulse conditions by numerical simulation. As for autocorrelation operation in the sub-μm silicon p-i-n rib waveguides on the 220 nm SOI (silicon on insulator) wafers, the autocorrelation error of pulse width measurement gradually increases with the increase of the peak power for both Gaussian and hyperbolic secant pulses due to the influence of free-carrier absorption (FCA). For the same pulse type, the relative error is independent of the input pulse width; however different pulse type has different peak power dependency of the accuracy. It was verified that this thin rib waveguide has a TPA responsivity >60 times higher than the thick rib waveguides and the correct pulse width can be measured with a <1% relative error for characterizing ps/sub-ps short pulses of sub-watt peak powers by utilizing the silicon wire p-i-n waveguides as the autocorrelator detector.