High-channel-count 20 GHz passively mode locked quantum dot laser directly grown on Si with 4.1 Tbit/s transmission capacity

Abstract

Low cost, small footprint, highly efficient and mass producible on-chip wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) light sources are key components in future silicon electronic and photonic integrated circuits (EPICs) which can fulfill the rapidly increasing bandwidth and lower energy per bit requirements. We present here, for the first time, a low noise high-channel-count 20 GHz passively mode-locked quantum dot laser grown on complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor compatible on-axis (001) silicon substrate. The laser demonstrates a wide mode-locking regime in the O-band. A record low timing jitter value of 82.7 fs (4 - 80 MHz) and a narrow RF 3-dB linewidth of 1.8 kHz are measured. The 3 dB optical bandwidth of the comb is 6.1 nm (containing 58 lines, with 80 lines within the 10 dB bandwidth). The integrated average relative intensity noise values of the whole spectrum and a single wavelength channel are - 152 dB/Hz and - 133 dB/Hz in the frequency range from 10 MHz to 10 GHz, respectively. Utilizing 64 channels, an aggregate total transmission capacity of 4.1 terabits per second is realized by employing a 32 Gbaud Nyquist four-level pulse amplitude modulation format. The demonstrated performance makes the laser a compelling on-chip WDM source for multi-terabit/s optical interconnects in future large-scale silicon EPICs.

arXiv comment7 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Quantum Communication
• Room Temperature InP DFB Laser Array Directly Grown on (001) Silicon
• Single-laser 32.5 Tbit/s Nyquist WDM transmission
• Monolithic quantum-dot distributed feedback laser array on silicon

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Broadband quantum-dot frequency-modulated comb laser
• High-pulse-energy integrated mode-locked lasers based on a Mamyshev oscillator
• Integrated Kerr frequency comb-driven silicon photonic transmitter
• Ultra-Compact Coupling Structures for Heterogeneously Integrated Silicon Lasers
• Findings of the 2nd Photonics and Electronics Technology for Extreme Scale Computing Workgroup (REPETE): Design Challenges for Socket Level Photonic I/O