Title:  Single-Event Radiation Response in Silicon Photonic Components and Systems

Committee: 

Dr. Cressler, Advisor     

Dr. Cai, Chair

Dr. Gaylord

Abstract: The objective of the proposed research is to investigate the impact of single-event radiation caused by high-energy particles on integrated silicon photonic components and systems. Deep-space optical communications have been proposed to increase data bandwidths and reduce the size, weight, power, and cost of legacy electrical systems. Integrated silicon photonics technology has become a contender to realize these space systems due to their rapid advancement in terrestrial systems over the past decade. However, little is known about this technology's response to and system-level impact of single-event phenomena. To better understand the limitations of silicon photonics for space applications, several experiments that emulated single-events were conducted on various integrated components. In the first work, optical single-event transients were induced in an integrated waveguide by a two-photon absorption process. The results reveal that an optical signal can experience temporal absorption during an event that generates a dense cloud of carriers within its path. In the next work, a single-event transient that originates within the electronics of a Mach-Zehnder modulator is shown how it propagates to the modulator's optical output. These propagation results indicate that the effect of electrical single-event radiation can be suppressed using clever design techniques. The proposed research will continue the single-event analysis with photodiodes, analyze the effects of single-event radiation in optical communications through bit-error probabilities, and compare single-event radiation induced by two-photon processes and heavy-ion bombardment within integrated waveguides.