Making Silicon Emit Light Using Third Harmonic Generation

Abstract Despite its excellent performance in microelectronic industry, silicon was not able to perform well in photonic devices arena. This is because the silicon has never been a good optical source mainly due to its indirect band gap structure. Many of the device functionalities in silicon have been reported, with an exception of – until recently – a reliable optical source. Silicon is a nonlinear material which makes use of its nonlinearities to realize various functionalities. This paper presents a theoretical treatment of generating and enhancing third-harmonic field which may be used as optical source, crystal state monitoring and all-optical signal processing applications.