Improving the Linearity of Silicon Ring Modulators by Manipulating the Photon Dynamics

We demonstrate that the linearity of silicon ring modulators can be improved significantly by manipulating the dynamics of photons in the cavity. A theoretically model is established to analyze the dependence of the modulation linearity on lifetime and wavelength of photons. By reducing Q factors of silicon ring modulators from 11000 to 5880 and tuning the operation wavelength, measured Spurious-Free Dynamic Ranges for the third-order intermodulation distortion are improved from 98.5 dB·Hz
^2/3
to 104.3 dB·Hz
^2/3
and from 90.6 dB·Hz
^2/3
to 94.7 dB·Hz
^2/3
at 1 GHz and 10 GHz, respectively.