Guiding, modulating, and emitting light on silicon - Challenges and opportunities

Silicon photonics could enable a chip-scale platform for monolithic integration of optics and microelectronics for applications of optical interconnects in which high data streams are required in a small footprint. This paper discusses mechanisms in silicon photonics for waveguiding, modulating, light amplification, and emission. These mechanisms, together with recent advances of fabrication techniques, have enabled the demonstration of ultracompact passive and active silicon photonic components with very low loss.