title: Observation of soliton compression in silicon photonic crystals.
abstract: Solitons are nonlinear waves present in diverse physical systems including plasmas, water surfaces and optics. In silicon, the presence of two photon absorption and accompanying free carriers strongly perturb the canonical dynamics of optical solitons. Here we report the first experimental demonstration of soliton-effect pulse compression of picosecond pulses in silicon, despite two photon absorption and free carriers. Here we achieve compression of 3.7 ps pulses to 1.6 ps with <10 pJ energy. We demonstrate a ~1-ps free-carrier-induced pulse acceleration and show that picosecond input pulses are critical to these observations. These experiments are enabled by a dispersion-engineered slow-light photonic crystal waveguide and an ultra-sensitive frequency-resolved electrical gating technique to detect the ultralow energies in the nanostructured device. Strong agreement with a nonlinear Schrödinger model confirms the measurements. These results further our understanding of nonlinear waves in silicon and open the way to soliton-based functionalities in complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor-compatible platforms.
authors.affiliation: 1] Centre for Ultrahigh bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS), Institute of Photonics and Optical Science (IPOS), School of Physics, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia [2] ICT-European Software Institute Division, Tecnalia, Parque Tecnologico de Bizkaia, Ibaizabal Bidea, Edificio 202, Zamudio, Bizkaia E-48170, Spain [3].
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Blanco-Redondo
authors.affiliation: 1] Centre for Ultrahigh bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS), Institute of Photonics and Optical Science (IPOS), School of Physics, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia [2].
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Husko
authors.affiliation: Centre for Ultrahigh bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS), Institute of Photonics and Optical Science (IPOS), School of Physics, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Eades
authors.affiliation: Centre for Ultrahigh bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS), Institute of Photonics and Optical Science (IPOS), School of Physics, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia.
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK.
authors.forename: T F
authors.initials: TF
authors.lastname: Krauss
authors.affiliation: Centre for Ultrahigh bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS), Institute of Photonics and Optical Science (IPOS), School of Physics, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia.
authors.forename: B J
authors.initials: BJ
authors.lastname: Eggleton