Third-order dispersion and ultrafast-pulse propagation in silicon wire waveguides

The dynamics of femtosecond (fs) pulse propagation in dispersion engineered silicon-on-insulator (SOI) photonic wires is investigated numerically. For fs pulses propagating in millimeter-long SOI waveguides, the interplay between nonlinear effects, group velocity dispersion (GVD), and the third-order dispersion (TOD) results in significant pulse reshaping. At the zero-GVD (ZGVD) wavelength, TOD causes strong pulse-shape asymmetry in both the temporal and spectral domains. In addition, in the anomalous GVD region near the ZGVD wavelength, soliton-like pulse dynamics is observed.