Mid-infrared to telecom-band supercontinuum generation in highly nonlinear silicon-on-insulator wire waveguides

We demonstrate the generation of a supercontinuum in a 2 cm long silicon wire by pumping the wire with mid-infrared picosecond pulses in the anomalous dispersion regime. The supercontinuum extends from 1535 nm up to 2525 nm for a coupled peak power of 12.7 W. It is shown that the supercontinuum originates primarily from the amplification of background noise. A detailed analysis of the spectral components which are generated through phase-matched processes is applied to extract the group velocity dispersion and fourth-order dispersion coefficient of the silicon wire waveguide. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America