Ultra-broadband optical amplification using nonlinear integrated waveguides

Four-wave mixing is a nonlinear optical phenomenon that can be used for wideband low-noise optical amplification and wavelength conversion. It has been extensively investigated for applications in communications1, computing2, metrology3, imaging4 and quantum optics5. With its advantages of small footprint, large nonlinearity and dispersion-engineering capability, optical integrated waveguides are excellent candidates for realizing high-gain and large-bandwidth four-wave mixing for which anomalous dispersion is a key condition. Various waveguides based on, for example, silicon, aluminium gallium arsenide and nonlinear glass have been studied6–10, but suffer from considerable gain and bandwidth reductions, as conventional design approaches for anomalous dispersion result in multi-mode operation. We present a methodology for fabricating nonlinear waveguides with simultaneous single-mode operation and anomalous dispersion for ultra-broadband operation and high-efficiency four-wave mixing. Although we implemented this in silicon nitride waveguides, the design approach can be used with other platforms as well. By using higher-order dispersion, we achieved unprecedented amplification bandwidths of more than 300 nm in these ultra-low-loss integrated waveguides. Penalty-free all-optical wavelength conversion of 100 Gbit s−1 data in a single optical channel of over 200 nm was realized. These single-mode dispersion-engineered nonlinear waveguides could become practical building blocks in various nonlinear photonics applications.