Brillouin and Kerr nonlinearities of a low-index silicon oxynitride platform

Abstract: Nonlinear optical effects including stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) and four-wave mixing (FWM) play an important role in microwave photonics, optical frequency combs, and quantum photonics. Harnessing SBS and FWM in a low-loss and versatile integrated platform would open the path to building large-scale Brillouin/Kerr-based photonic integrated circuits. In this letter, we investigate the Brillouin and Kerr properties of a low-index (n=1.513 @ 1550 nm) silicon oxynitride (SiON) platform. We observed, for the first time, backward SBS in SiON waveguides with a Brillouin gain coefficient of 0.3$\rm m^{-1}W^{-1}$, which can potentially be increased to 0.95$\rm m^{-1}W^{-1}$ by just tailoring the waveguide cross-section. We also performed FWM experiments in SiON rings and obtained the nonlinear parameter $\gamma$, of 0.02 $\rm m^{-1}W^{-1}$. Our results point to a low-loss and low-index photonic integrated platform that is both Brillouin and Kerr active.