Octave-spanning mid-infrared supercontinuum generation in silicon nanowaveguides

We report, to the best of our knowledge, the first demonstration of octave-spanning supercontinuum generation (SCG) on a silicon chip, spanning from the telecommunications c-band near 1.5 m to the mid-infrared region beyond 3.6 mu m. The SCG presented here is characterized by soliton fission and dispersive radiation across two zero group-velocity dispersion wavelengths. In addition, we numerically investigate the role of multiphoton absorption and free carriers, confirming that these nonlinear loss mechanisms are not detrimental to SCG in this regime. (C) 2014 Optical Society of America