Non-reciprocity in a silicon photonic ring resonator with time-modulated regions

Non-reciprocity and breaking of the time-reversal symmetry is conventionally achieved using magneto-optic materials. However, the integration of these materials with complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS)-compatible platforms is challenging. Temporal modulation is a well-suited approach for achieving non-reciprocity in integrated photonics. However, existing experimental implementations based on this method in silicon uses traveling-wave modulation in the whole structure or tandem ring or waveguide modulators, and they lead to high insertion loss and large footprint. In this work we achieve, to the best of our knowledge, the first experimental demonstration of non-reciprocity in a compact single silicon photonic ring resonator with time-modulated regions, fabricated with a CMOS-compatible commercial foundry. We demonstrate symmetry breaking of counter-rotating modes in an active silicon photonic ring resonator by applying phase-shifted RF signals to only two small p-i-n junctions on the ring, without employing traveling-wave modulation in the whole structure. The non-reciprocity is caused by the cross-coupling between the counter-rotating modes of the ring, which breaks their degeneracy. By reversing the polarity of the RF phase difference (e.g. (45°,-45°) asymmetric phases) opposite resonance wavelengths are obtained, with a 16-dB contrast between the transmissions of the asymmetric phases and a low insertion loss of 0.6 dB under 27 dBm RF power. We achieve the highest ratio of the asymmetric transmission to the insertion loss, among the state-of-the-art silicon non-reciprocal integrated optical structures based on time varying modulation. The non-reciprocal ring can be used as a magnetic-free, low-loss, compact, and CMOS-compatible integrated optical isolator.