Thermal tuning of Kerr frequency combs in silicon nitride microring resonators

Xiaoxiao Xue, Yi Xuan, Cong Wang, Pei Hsun Wang, Yang Liu, Ben Niu, Daniel E. Leaird, Minghao Qi, Andrew M. Weiner

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

137 Scopus citations

Abstract

Microresonator based Kerr frequency comb generation has many attractive features, including ultrabroad spectra, chip-level integration, and low power consumption. Achieving precise tuning control over the comb frequencies will be important for a number of practical applications, but has been little explored for microresonator combs. In this paper, we characterize the thermal tuning of a coherent Kerr frequency comb generated from an on-chip silicon nitride microring. When the microring temperature is changed by ~70 °C with an integrated microheater, the line spacing and center frequency of the comb are tuned respectively by -253 MHz (-3.57 MHz/°C) and by -175 GHz (-2.63 GHz/°C); the latter constitutes 75% of the comb line spacing. From these results we obtain a shift of 25 GHz (362.07 MHz/°C) in the comb carrier-envelope offset frequency. Numerical simulations are performed by taking into account the thermo-optic effects in the waveguide core and cladding. The temperature variation of the comb line spacing predicted from simulations is close to that observed in experiments. The time-dependent thermal response of the microheater based tuning scheme is characterized; time constants of 30.9 μs and 0.71ms are observed.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)687-698
Number of pages12
JournalOptics Express
Volume24
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - 11 Jan 2016

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