Optical properties of highly nonlinear silicon-organic hybrid (SOH) waveguide geometries

Geometry, nonlinearity, dispersion and two-photon absorption figure of merit of three basic silicon-organic hybrid waveguide designs are compared. Four-wave mixing and heterodyne pump-probe measurements show that all designs achieve high nonlinearities. The fundamental limitation of two-photon absorption in silicon is overcome using silicon-organic hybrid integration, with a five-fold improvement for the figure of merit (FOM). The value of FOM = 2.19 measured for silicon-compatible nonlinear slot waveguides is the highest value published.