Highly coherent mid-infrared wideband supercontinuum generation by a silica cladded silicon nitride core buried waveguide

Abstract

Optical waveguides with semiconductor cores are drawing considerable research interest in the domain of supercontinuum (SC) generation in recent times. In this work, we design a square-core silicon nitride buried waveguide with a silica-clad, aiming for a wideband spectrum generation in the mid-IR region when operated at the standard telecommunication wavelength of 1550 nm. Among different such silicon nitride square-core buried waveguides, we propose a typical design with dimensions of 400 nm × 400 nm along its height and width, capable of producing a highly coherent broadband intensity spectrum ranging from 810 nm to 5441 nm after propagating through just a few millimeters of the waveguide. The group velocity dispersion maintains minimal value over a broad wavelength range in the mid-IR region, while the nonlinear coefficient is estimated to be sufficiently high. The nonlinear pulse propagation through such a waveguide leads to achieving an SC spanning over 2.76 octaves, sufficiently broader than previously reported silicon nitride-based waveguides. Furthermore, our calculations confirm the highly coherent nature of the generated SC. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of SC generation maintaining a high degree of coherence over such a wide wavelength range in the mid-IR zone using a square-core silicon nitride buried waveguide.