  Tapered and dispersion managed (DM) silicon nanophotonic waveguides are
investigated for the generation of optimal ultra broadband supercontinuum (SC).
DM waveguides are structures showing a longitudinally dependent group velocity
dispersion that results from the variation of the waveguide width with the
propagation distance. For the generation of optimal SC, a genetic algorithm has
been used to find the best dispersion map. This allows for the generation of
highly coherent supercontinuums that span over 1.14 octaves from 1300 nm to
2860 nm and 1.25 octaves from 1200 nm to 2870 nm at -20 dB level for the
tapered and DM waveguides respectively, for a 2 $\mu$m, 200 fs and 6.4 pJ input
pulse. The comparison of these two structures with the usually considered
optimal fixed width waveguide shows that the SC is broader and flatter in the
more elaborated DM waveguide, while the high coherence is ensured by the
varying dispersion.
