Influence of the initial chirp on the supercontinuum generation in silicon-on-insulator waveguide

We propose a practical method to broaden the bandwidth of supercontinuum generated in silicon-on-insulator (SOI) waveguide by controlling the initial chirp of inputting femtosecond pulses, which has the main impact on the initial stage of the spectral broadening caused by the self-phase modulation (SPM) effect. The numerical results show that the bandwidth and flatness of the supercontinuum generated in SOI waveguide are sensitive to the initial chirp of inputting femtosecond pulses, the supercontinuum bandwidth can be remarkably enhanced by inputting positive chirp femtosecond pulses with a decreased propagation distance required by soliton fission, and the maximum bandwidth of supercontinuum can be increased to 1500 nm.