Four-wave mixing in silicon wire waveguides

We report the observation of four-wave mixing phenomenon in a simple silicon wire waveguide at the optical powers normally employed in communications systems. The maximum conversion efficiency is about -35 dB in the case of a 1.58-cm-long silicon wire waveguide. The nonlinear refractive index coefficient is found to be 9x10-18 m2/W. This value is not negligible for dense wavelength division multiplexing components, because it predicts the possibility of large crosstalk. On the other hand, with longer waveguide lengths with smaller propagation loss, it would be possible to utilize just a simple silicon wire for practical wavelength conversion. We demonstrate the wavelength conversion for data rate of 10-Gbps using a 5.8-cm-long silicon wire. These characteristics are attributed to the extremely small core of silicon wire waveguides.