Mid-Infrared All-Optical Wavelength Conversion of NRZ OOK Signal in Silicon Waveguides

The escalating demand for data traffic is driving the pursuit of new wavelength bands beyond the conventional telecom windows as a key expansion strategy. The 2 μm waveband is considered a novel communication window with distinct advantages of lower signal loss and broader gain bandwidth. Meanwhile, wavelength conversion is a critical enabler for the next-generation high-speed all-optical networks. In this work, we demonstrate, for the first time, all-optical wavelength conversion of high-speed nonreturn-to-zero on–off keying signals in the 2 μm waveband via four-wave mixing, employing a continuous-wave pump and silicon waveguides fabricated on a standard 340 nm silicon-on-insulator platform. A high conversion efficiency of −12.09 dB is achieved with an input pump power of 21.72 dBm. Facilitated by a pump laser centered at 2008 nm, broadband wavelength conversion is experimentally demonstrated over a conversion span of 314.9 nm. Moreover, wavelength conversion of 10 Gbit/s and 15 Gbit/s data signals is successfully demonstrated, with respective power penalties of 2.56 and 3.95 dB measured at a bit error ratio of 3.8 × 10–3. The promise of the demonstrated mid-infrared wavelength converter for future chip-scale high-speed optical communication is supported by the experimental results.