Actively stabilized silicon microrings with integrated surface-state-absorption photodetectors using a slope-detection method.

We propose and experimentally demonstrate actively stabilized silicon microrings with integrated surface-state-absorption (SSA) photodetectors using a slope-detection method. Our proof-of-concept experiments reveal that the active stabilization using multiple discrete-step slope thresholds can effectively reduce the microring transmitted intensity variations upon various temperature modulation conditions. We demonstrate an actively stabilized microring transmission with intensity modulations within ~2.5 dB upon a 5mHz temperature modulation between 17 °C and 31 °C, which is ~7.5dB improved from without stabilization. The active alignment tolerance between the stabilized microring resonance wavelength and a carrier wavelength is ~0.16 nm over a 14°C temperature modulation. We observe open eye-diagrams at a data transmission rate of up to 30 Gb/s under temperature modulations with actively stabilized silicon microrings.