Optically tunable Fano resonance in a grating-based Fabry-Perot cavity-coupled microring resonator on a silicon chip

A grating-based Fabry-Perot (FP) cavity-coupled microring resonator on a silicon chip is reported to demonstrate an all-optically tunable Fano resonance. In the device, an add-drop microring resonator (MRR) is employed, and one of the two bus waveguides is replaced by an FP cavity consisting of two sidewall Bragg gratings. By choosing the parameters of the gratings, the resonant mode of the FP cavity is coupled to one of the resonant modes of the MRR. Due to the coupling between the resonant modes, a Fano resonance with an asymmetric line shape resulted. Measurement results show a Fano resonance with an extinction ratio of 22.54 dB, and a slope rate of 250.4 dB/nm is achieved. A further study of the effect of the coupling on the Fano resonance is performed numerically and experimentally. Thanks to the strong light-confinement capacity of the MRR and the FP cavity, a strong two-photon absorption induced nonlinear thermal-optic effect resulted, which is used to tune the Fano resonance optically.