- Ultrahigh-Bandwidth Optical Signal Processing
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PicoLuz pioneers the commercialization of ultrafast optical signal processing systems bases on the time lens technology. Temporal imaging systems based on time lens enable compression, expansion, inversion, or Fourier-transformation of optical waveforms. The time lens technology used in our products benefits from broadband and power-efficient four-wave mixing in dispersion engineered waveguides and is capable of processing information with bandwidths beyond 1 THz. Our first product, the ultrafast temporal magnifier, realizes the simplest form of time lens based temporal processing. This system enables stretching optical waveforms in time by very large factors (> 500) such that they can be detected and characterized using standard photo-detectors and oscilloscopes. One of the unique advantages offered by time lens systems is their capability for single-shot processing, which allows for characterizing non-repetitive waveforms. For example, single-shot optical waveform characterization with temporal resolutions better than 250 fs and record lengths longer than 100 ps has been recently demonstrated [Nature 456, 81-84 (2008)]. For more details, please visit our technology and products pages.
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- Silicon Nanophotonic Waveguides
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PicoLuz is developing silicon nanophotonic waveguides that are especially designed to optimize their optical nonlinearity. These devices combine a large nonlinear coefficient with an exceptional flexibility to engineer the waveguide dispersion, both of which are key factors in achieving power-efficient and broadband wavelength conversion. Our effort in silicon photonics device development is supported by cutting-edge scientific research at Cornell University on a variety of systems based on the four-wave mixing process in silicon nano-waveguides, including mid-infrared optical sources and broadband optical comb generators. Engineering the zero-dispersion wavelength in silicon nanophotonic devices leads to extremely broadband wavelength coversion systems, for example, from the communications band to the mid-infrared [Optics Letters 36, 1262-1265 (2011)]. Combing the dispersion engineering with the light enhancement in micro-cavity geometries such as micro-ring resonators enables optical parametric oscillation on chip-scale devices [Nature Photonics 4, 37-40 (2009)], leading to the generation of broadband optical frequency combs.
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