Dispersion engineering of high-Q silicon microresonators via thermal oxidation

Abstract: We propose and demonstrate a convenient and sensitive technique for precise engineering of group-velocity dispersion in high-Q silicon microresonators. By accurately controlling the surface-oxidation thickness of silicon microdisk resonators, we are able to precisely manage the zero-dispersion wavelength while simultaneously further improving the high optical quality of our devices, with the optical Q close to a million. The demonstrated dispersion management allows us to achieve parametric generation with precisely engineerable emission wavelengths, which shows great potential for application in integrated silicon nonlinear and quantum photonics.