Direct thermo-optical tuning of silicon microresonators for the mid-infrared

Weuselightfromavisiblelaserdiodetodirectlytunesilicon-on-chipmicroresonators by thermo-optical effect. We show that this direct tuning is local, non invasive and has a much smaller time constant than global temperature tuning methods. Such an approach could prove to be highly effective for Kerr comb generation in microresonators pumped by quantum cascade lasers, which cannot be easily tuned to achieve comb generation and soliton-modelocked states.