Optical bistability, self-pulsing and XY optimization in silicon micro-rings with active carrier removal
Ryan Hamerly, Dodd Joseph Gray, Christopher M. Rogers, Levon Mirzoyan, Meysam Namdari, Kambiz Jamshidi · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2017
We theoretically study the nonlinear dynamics of silicon ring cavities with active carrier removal. In this system, linear dispersion, Kerr nonlinearity, two-photon absorption, and free-carrier dispersion / absorption play a key role in the dynamics and the steady-state behavior of the device. Placing the cavity inside a reverse-biased p-i-n junction allows one to reach a regime where both optical bistability and limit-cycle oscillations are accessible. Based on these phenomena, we propose and simulate a free-carrier based random number generator and an "Ising machine", consisting of interconnected ring cavities, which searches for the ground state of the NP-hard Ising XY problem.