Dispersion tailoring and soliton propagation in silicon waveguides

The dispersive properties of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) waveguides are studied by using the effective-index method. Extensive calculations indicate that an SOI waveguide can be designed to have its zero-dispersion wavelength near 1.5 microm with reasonable device dimensions. Numerical simulations show that soliton-like pulse propagation is achievable in such a waveguide in the spectral region at approximately 1.55 microm. The concept of path-averaged solitons is used to minimize the impact of linear loss and two-photon absorption.