Cooperative Spontaneous Four-wave Mixing in Single-channel and Dualchannel Sequences of Side-coupled Ring Resonators

Abstract

Cooperative photon pair generation by Spontaneous Four-Wave Mixing (SFWM) process in singlechannel and dual-channel side-coupled ring resonator sequences is investigated. Our analysis shows that superlinear growth of generation rate with respect to the number of rings is possible even in presence of loss. Experimental evidence of super-SFWM is provided by comparing individual and collective generation rates obtained from a dual-channel ring resonator sequence. The results are in good agreement with theory and suggest that high photon pair generation rates can be achieved from integrated silicon ring resonator sequences without initiating nonlinear absorption processes.