Mid-infrared frequency comb generation in coupled silicon microring resonators

We propose and simulate an on-chip mid-IR frequency comb generator based on the four-wave mixing (FWM) effect in a coupled silicon microring resonator. The resonator is formed by suspended ridge waveguides that are designed to have low group-velocity dispersion. A continuous-wave pump laser coupled into the resonator excites other longitudinal modes of the resonator through FWM-based parametric oscillations. In comparison with the device based on a single-ring resonator, we numerically demonstrate that the pump threshold can be dramatically reduced by introducing an auxiliary ring resonator to compensate the phase mismatch between the pump and the generated comb components. The proposed frequency comb generator has a low pump threshold of similar to 40 mW and a high efficiency of similar to 25% at the pump power of 100 mW. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.