Enhancing the efficiency of silicon Raman converters

We propose a silicon ring Raman converter in which the spatial variation of the Raman gain along the ring for TE polarization is used to quasi-phase-match the CARS process. If in addition the pump, Stokes, and anti-Stokes waves involved in the CARS interaction are resonantly enhanced by the ring structure, the Stokes-to-anti-Stokes conversion efficiency can be increased by at least four orders of magnitude over that of one-dimensional perfectly phase-matched silicon Raman converters, and can reach values larger than unity with relatively low input pump intensities. These improvements in conversion performance could substantially expand the practical applicability of the CARS process for optical wavelength conversion.