High-Performance Amplifier Design of Er-Yb-Based Heterogeneous Paperclip Slot Waveguide

Integrated optical waveguide amplifiers outperform in terms of compact footprint and low power consumption with a scalable manner, serving as the foundation for optical communications and laser technology. The realization of highgain for such integrated devices is made more challenging by tight optical confinement and low propagation loss. In this work, we present efficient amplification in erbium-ytterbium-based heterogeneous paperclip slot waveguide via silicon nitride photonics integrated circuits. By carefully designing a heterogeneous device using optical mode propagation and dispersion-engineered, this heterostructure features a low propagation loss and high single-mode conservation at 1530 nm. A comprehensive erbiumytterbium co-doped amplifier dynamic modeling is established by introducing a quenching process, which further optimizes the parameters to improve the amplifier performance. The simulation results demonstrate that a heterogeneous paperclip slot waveguide can potentially achieve up to 27 dB/cm modal gain per unit length. This work provides a predictive design framework for endowing silicon nitride photonic integrated circuits with efficient amplification and enriches the integration of active functionalities on silicon.