Versatile silicon-waveguide supercontinuum for coherent mid-infrared spectroscopy

Abstract

Infrared spectroscopy is a powerful tool for basic and applied science. The molecular spectral fingerprints in the 3 um to 20 um region provide a means to uniquely identify molecular structure for fundamental spectroscopy, atmospheric chemistry, trace and hazardous gas detection, and biological microscopy. Driven by such applications, the development of low-noise, coherent laser sources with broad, tunable coverage is a topic of great interest. Laser frequency combs possess a unique combination of precisely defined spectral lines and broad bandwidth that can enable the above-mentioned applications. Here, we leverage robust fabrication and geometrical dispersion engineering of silicon nanophotonic waveguides for coherent frequency comb generation spanning 70 THz in the mid-infrared (2.5 um to 6.2 um). Precise waveguide fabrication provides significant spectral broadening and engineered spectra targeted at specific mid-infrared bands. We use this coherent light source for dual-comb spectroscopy at 5 um.

26 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Silicon-Chip Mid-Infrared Frequency Comb Generation
• An octave spanning mid-infrared frequency comb generated in a silicon nanophotonic wire waveguide
• Direct Frequency Comb Measurement of OD + CO -> DOCO Kinetics
• Ultrabroadband supercontinuum generation and frequency-comb stabilization using on-chip waveguides with both cubic and quadratic nonlinearities
• Molecular fingerprint-region spectroscopy from 5-12 μm using an orientation-patterned gallium phosphide optical parametric oscillator
• Adaptive sampling dual terahertz comb spectroscopy using free-running dual femtosecond lasers

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Supercontinuum generation in 2D graphene oxide film coated SiN waveguides
• Nanophotonic supercontinuum based mid-infrared dual-comb spectroscopy
• ${\chi }^{(2)}$ mid-infrared frequency comb generation and stabilization with few-cycle pulses
• Supercontinuum generation in varying-dispersion and birefringent silicon waveguide
• Nonlinear silicon waveguides generating broadband, spectrally engineered frequency combs spanning 2.0-8.5 um
• Dual-comb spectroscopy with tailored spectral broadening in Si${}_3$N${}_4$ nanophotonics
• Advanced dispersion engineering of a III-Nitride micro-resonator for a blue/UV frequency comb
• Mid-infrared frequency comb with 25 pJ threshold via CW-seeded optical parametric generation in nonlinear waveguide
• Near-infrared dual-comb spectroscopy of CO2 and N2O with a discretized highly nonlinear fiber
• Versatile optical frequency combs based on multi-seeded femtosecond optical parametric generation