Synchronization of silicon thermal-free-carrier oscillators

Abstract

Recent exploration of collective phenomena in oscillator arrays has highlighted its potential for accessing a range of physical phenomena, from fundamental quantum many-body dynamics to the solution of practical optimization problems using photonic Ising machines. Spontaneous oscillations often arise in these oscillator arrays as an imbalance between gain and loss. Due to coupling between array individuals, the spontaneous oscillation is constrained and lead to interesting collective behavior, such as synchronized oscillations in optomechanical oscillator arrays, ferromagnetic-like coupling in delay-coupled optical parametric oscillators and binary phase states in coupled laser arrays. A key aspect of arrays is not only the coupling between its individuals but also their compliance towards neighbor stimuli. One self-sustaining photonic oscillator that can be readily implemented in a scalable foundry-based technology is based on the interaction of free-carriers, temperature and optical field of a resonant silicon photonic microcavity. Here we demonstrate that these silicon thermal-free-carrier oscillators are extremely compliant to external excitation and can be synchronized up to their 16$^\text{th}$ harmonic using a weak seed. Exploring this unprecedented compliance to external stimuli, we also demonstrate robust synchronization between two thermal free carrier oscillators.