Hybrid micro-cavity lasers based on high-Q grating resonators

Si-photonics based optical interconnects is one promising candidate to overcome the bottleneck posed by electrical interconnects for future on-and off-chip data communication in high performance computing system. One key issue with Si photonics based optical interconnects, however, is that an energy-efficient, high bandwidth, and high-speed laser is missing. This challenge has motivated researchers around the world to demonstrate various innovative Si-on-chip light sources. Within this realm, we have experimentally demonstrated high speed Si-on-chip long wavelength lasers based on the high-Q resonance mode supported by high contrast grating (HCG) and hybrid grating (HG). These lasers are named as HCG-resonator laser and HG-resonator laser, respectively. Apart from surface emission, these lasers can also have functionality of outputting light laterally into an silicon waveguide for on-chip interconnect application. In addition, by simply changing the grating parameters, different lasing wavelength emission can be achieved for both lasers. This property is beneficial for wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) technique, where different optical signals with slightly different wavelengths are combined in a single optical waveguide. As a result, high bandwidth data transmission can be achieved. With such properties of HCG and HG-resonators, both lasers are promising light source candidates for future optical interconnects application