Silicon Photonic Nanowire Soliton-Effect Compressor at 1.5 $\mu$m

Soliton-effect compression of femtosecond optical pulses in a silicon photonic nanowire at 1.5 mum is numerically investigated. A region of anomalous group velocity dispersion, small third-order dispersion, and large nonlinearity of silicon is used to show compression of 30-fs input pulses to 1 fs. Large nonlinearity of silicon allows for compression of input pulses with subnanojoule energies.