Supercontinuum Spanning 2.8 Octaves in 4H-Silicon-Carbide Waveguides

Supercontinuum generation has been widely investigated as a way to considerably extend the span of an optical frequency comb, while maintaining its coherence. One area of application is gas-phase spectroscopy in the molecular-fingerprint mid-infrared region. 4H-Silicon-Carbide (SiC) on insulator has emerged as a competitive platform for non-linear optics. Recent progress in the fabrication process of waveguides have lowered the propagation loss down to 0.08 dB/cm [1], while the material exhibits strong second and third order optical nonlinearities, a wide transparency window, and a high refractive index contrast with the silica cladding.