Four-wave mixing in slow light engineered silicon photonic crystal waveguides

We experimentally investigate four-wave mixing (FWM) in short (80 mu m) dispersion-engineered slow light silicon photonic crystal waveguides. The pump, probe and idler signals all lie in a 14 nm wide low dispersion region with a near-constant group velocity of c/30. We measure an instantaneous conversion efficiency of up to -9dB between the idler and the continuous-wave probe, with 1W peak pump power and 6nm pump-probe detuning. This conversion efficiency is found to be considerably higher (>10 x) than that of a Si nanowire with a group velocity ten times larger. In addition, we estimate the FWM bandwidth to be at least that of the flat band slow light window. These results, supported by numerical simulations, emphasize the importance of engineering the dispersion of PhC waveguides to exploit the slow light enhancement of FWM efficiency, even for short device lengths. (C) 2010 Optical Society of America