Thermal nonlinear effect in high Q factor silicon-on-insulator microring resonator

In this paper, all-optical switching in silicon-on-insulator (SOI) serially coupled ring resonator based on thermal nonlinear effect is proposed. The radii of the silicon microring resonator are 10 μm. In experiment, firstly measured by single pump injection technology with vertical coupling surface grating coupler method, the highest notch of serially coupled ring resonator is 17 dB. The strong transverse light-confinement nature of the resonator induces nonlinear optical response with low pump power. Thermal nonlinear effect is achieved by controlling the power of the continuous-wave (CW) pump with very low tuning threshold (0.33 nm). And the slop of resonant wavelength as a function of injected pump is 220 pm/mw. Secondly, switching time measured by two pump injection technology is 3.01 μs and 1.03 μs, respectively. Which could be used in integrated photonic communication circuits based optical logic and slow-light structure.