Integrated Optics|127 Article(s)
Multi-channel Hong–Ou–Mandle interference between independent comb-based weak coherent pulses
Long Huang, Linhan Tang, Yang Wang, Minhui Cheng, B. E. Little, Sai T. Chu, Wei Zhao, Weiqiang Wang, and Wenfu Zhang
With the widespread application of quantum communication technology, there is an urgent need to enhance unconditionally secure key rates and capacity. Measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (MDI-QKD), proven to be immune to detection-side channel attacks, is a secure and reliable quantum communication scheme. The core of this scheme is Hong–Ou–Mandle (HOM) interference, a quantum optical phenomenon with no classical analog, where identical photons meeting on a symmetric beam splitter (BS) undergo interference and bunching. Any differences in the degrees of freedom (frequency, arrival time, spectrum, polarization, and the average number of photons per pulse) between the photons will deteriorate the interference visibility. Here, we demonstrate 16-channel weak coherent pulses (WCPs) of HOM interference with all channels’ interference visibility over 46% based on two independent frequency-post-aligned soliton microcombs (SMCs). In our experiment, full locking and frequency alignment of the comb teeth between the two SMCs were achieved through pump frequency stabilization, SMC repetition rate locking, and fine tuning of the repetition rate. This demonstrates the feasibility of using independently generated SMCs as multi-wavelength sources for quantum communication. Meanwhile, SMC can achieve hundreds of frequency-stable comb teeth by locking only two parameters, which further reduces the complexity of frequency locking and the need for finding sufficient suitable frequency references compared to independent laser arrays.
Photonics Research
  • Publication Date: Mar. 11, 2025
  • Vol. 13, Issue 4, 837 (2025)
High-linearity wide-bandwidth integrated thin-film lithium niobate modulator based on a dual-optical-mode co-modulated configuration
Heyun Tan, Junwei Zhang, Jingyi Wang, Songnian Fu, Siyuan Yu, and Xinlun Cai
High-linearity electro-optic (EO) modulators play a crucial role in microwave photonics (MWP). Although various methods have been explored to enhance linearity in MWP links, they are often constrained by the intrinsic nonlinearity of modulator materials, the complexity of external control devices, the bulkiness of structures, and bandwidth limitations. In this study, we present an integrated thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) linear Mach–Zehnder modulator (LMZM), showing, to our knowledge, a record-high spurious-free dynamic range (SFDR) of 121.7 dB·Hz4/5 at 1 GHz with an optical power (OP) of 5.5 dBm into the photodetector (PD), based on a wide-bandwidth (>50 GHz) dual-optical-mode (TE0 and TE1) co-modulated configuration with just one RF input. Additionally, compared to conventional MZMs (CMZMs), the LMZM exhibits a >10.6-dB enhancement in SFDR with an OP of >-8 dBm at 1 GHz, and maintains a 6.07-dB SFDR improvement even at 20 GHz with an OP of 0 dBm. The novel LMZM, featuring high linearity, wide bandwidth, structural simplicity, and high integration, holds significant potential as a key component in future large-scale and high-performance MWP integrated circuits.
Photonics Research
  • Publication Date: Mar. 11, 2025
  • Vol. 13, Issue 4, 817 (2025)
Silicon-integrated scandium-doped aluminum nitride electro-optic modulator
Tianqi Xu, Yushuai Liu, Yuanmao Pu, Yongxiang Yang, Qize Zhong, Xingyan Zhao, Yang Qiu, Yuan Dong, Tao Wu, Shaonan Zheng, and Ting Hu
Scandium-doped aluminum nitride (AlScN) with an asymmetric hexagonal wurtzite structure exhibits enhanced second-order nonlinear and piezoelectric properties compared to aluminum nitride (AlN), while maintaining a relatively large bandgap. It provides a promising platform for photonic circuits and facilitates the seamless integration of passive and active functional devices. Here, we present the design, fabrication, and characterization of Al0.904Sc0.096N electro-optic (EO) micro-ring modulators, introducing active functionalities to the chip-scale AlScN platform. These waveguide-integrated EO modulators utilize sputtered Al0.904Sc0.096N thin films as the light-guiding medium, with the entire fabrication process being compatible with complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology. We extract the in-device effective EO coefficient of 2.86 pm/V at 12 GHz. The devices show a minimum half-wave voltage-length product of 3.12 V·cm at a modulation frequency of 14 GHz, and achieve a 3-dB modulation bandwidth of approximately 22 GHz. Our work provides a promising modulation scheme for cost-effective silicon-integrated photonics systems.
Photonics Research
  • Publication Date: Jan. 31, 2025
  • Vol. 13, Issue 2, 477 (2025)
Microwave-resonator-enabled broadband on-chip electro-optic frequency comb generation|On the Cover , Spotlight on Optics
Zhaoxi Chen, Yiwen Zhang, Hanke Feng, Yuansong Zeng, Ke Zhang, and Cheng Wang
Optical frequency combs play a crucial role in optical communications, time-frequency metrology, precise ranging, and sensing. Among various generation schemes, resonant electro-optic combs are particularly attractive for their excellent stability, flexibility, and broad bandwidths. In this approach, an optical pump undergoes multiple electro-optic modulation processes in a high-Q optical resonator, resulting in cascaded spectral sidebands. However, most resonant electro-optic combs to date make use of lumped-capacitor electrodes with relatively inefficient utilization of the input electrical power. This design also reflects most electrical power back to the driving circuits and necessitates costly radio-frequency (RF) isolators in between, presenting substantial challenges in practical applications. To address these issues, we present an RF circuit friendly electro-optic frequency comb generator incorporated with on-chip coplanar microwave resonator electrodes, based on a thin-film lithium niobate platform. Our design achieves more than three times electrical power reduction with minimal reflection at the designed comb repetition rate of ∼25 GHz. We experimentally demonstrate broadband electro-optic frequency comb generation with a comb span of >85 nm at a moderate electrical driving power of 740 mW (28.7 dBm). Our power-efficient and isolator-free electro-optic comb source could offer a compact, low-cost, and simple-to-design solution for applications in spectroscopy, high-precise metrology, and optical communications.
Photonics Research
  • Publication Date: Jan. 30, 2025
  • Vol. 13, Issue 2, 426 (2025)
On-chip microresonator dispersion engineering via segmented sidewall modulation
Masoud Kheyri, Shuangyou Zhang, Toby Bi, Arghadeep Pal, Hao Zhang, Yaojing Zhang, Abdullah Alabbadi, Haochen Yan, Alekhya Ghosh, Lewis Hill, Pablo Bianucci, Eduard Butzen, Florentina Gannott, Alexander Gumann, Irina Harder, Olga Ohletz, and Pascal Del’Haye
Microresonator dispersion plays a crucial role in shaping the nonlinear dynamics of microcavity solitons. Here, we introduce and validate a method for dispersion engineering through modulating a portion of the inner edge of ring waveguides. We demonstrate that such partial modulation has a broadband effect on the dispersion profile, whereas modulation on the entire resonator’s inner circumference leads to mode splitting primarily affecting one optical mode. The impact of spatial modulation amplitude, period, and number of modulations on the mode splitting profile is also investigated. Through the integration of four modulated sections with different modulation amplitudes and periods, we achieve mode splitting across more than 50 modes over a spectral range exceeding 100 nm in silicon nitride resonators. These results highlight both the simplicity and efficacy of our method in achieving flatter dispersion profiles.
Photonics Research
  • Publication Date: Jan. 17, 2025
  • Vol. 13, Issue 2, 367 (2025)
Heterogeneously integrated silicon-conductive oxide MOSCAP microring modulator array
Wei-Che Hsu, Saeed Abdolhosseini, Haisheng Rong, Ranjeet Kumar, Bernd Zechmann, and Alan X. Wang
In pursuit of energy-efficient optical interconnect, the silicon microring modulator (Si-MRM) has emerged as a pivotal device offering an ultra-compact footprint and capability of on-chip wavelength division multiplexing (WDM). This paper presents a 1×4 metal-oxide-semiconductor capacitor (MOSCAP) Si-MRM array gated by high-mobility titanium-doped indium oxide (ITiO), which was fabricated by combining Intel’s high-volume manufacturing process and the transparent conductive oxide (TCO) patterning with the university facility. The 1×4 Si-MRM array exhibits a high electro-optic (E-O) efficiency with Vπ·L of 0.12 V·cm and achieves a modulation rate of (3×25+1×15) Gb/s with a measured bandwidth of 14 GHz. Additionally, it can perform on-chip WDM modulation at four equally spaced wavelengths without using thermal heaters. The process compatibility between silicon photonics and TCO materials is verified by such an industry-university co-fabrication approach for the MOSCAP Si-MRM array and demonstrated enhanced performance from heterogeneous integration.
Photonics Research
  • Publication Date: Dec. 24, 2024
  • Vol. 13, Issue 1, 187 (2025)
Lithium niobate electro-optical modulator based on ion-cut wafer scale heterogeneous bonding on patterned SOI wafers
Zhuoyun Li, Yang Chen, Shuxiao Wang, Fan Xu, Qiang Xu, Jianmin Zhang, Qiannan Zhu, Wencheng Yue, Xin Ou, Yan Cai, and Mingbin Yu
This paper presents the design, fabrication, and characterization of a high-performance heterogeneous silicon on insulator (SOI)/thin film lithium niobate (TFLN) electro-optical modulator based on wafer-scale direct bonding followed by ion-cut technology. The SOI wafer has been processed by an 8 inch standard fabrication line and cut into 6 inch for direct bonding with TFLN. The hybrid SOI/LN electro-optical modulator operated at the wavelength of 1.55 μm is composed of couplers on the Si layer and a Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI) structure on the LN layer. The fabricated device exhibits a stable value of the product of half-wave voltage and length (VπL) of around 2.9 V·cm. It shows a good low-frequency electro-optic response flatness and supports 96 Gbit/s data transmission for the NRZ format and 192 Gbit/s data transmission for the PAM-4 format.
Photonics Research
  • Publication Date: Dec. 20, 2024
  • Vol. 13, Issue 1, 106 (2025)
Demonstration of a photonic integrated circuit for quantitative phase imaging
Chupao Lin, Yujie Guo, and Nicolas Le Thomas
Quantitative phase imaging (QPI) is an optical microscopy method that has been developed over nearly a century to rapidly visualize and analyze transparent or weakly scattering objects in view of biological, medical, or material science applications. The bulky nature of the most performant QPI techniques in terms of phase noise limits their large-scale deployment. In this context, the beam shaping properties of photonic chips, combined with their intrinsic compact size and low cost, could be beneficial. Here, we demonstrate the implementation of QPI with a photonic integrated circuit (PIC) used as an add-on to a standard wide-field microscope. Combining a 50 mm×50 mm footprint PIC as a secondary coherent illuminating light source with an imaging microscope objective of numerical aperture 0.45 and implementing a phase retrieval approach based on the Kramers–Kronig relations, we achieve a phase noise of 5.5 mrad and a diffraction limited spatial resolution of 400 nm. As a result, we retrieve quantitative phase images of Escherichia coli bacteria cells and monolayers of graphene patches from which we determine a graphene monolayer thickness of 0.45±0.15 nm. The current phase noise level is more than five times lower than that obtained with other state-of-the-art QPI techniques using coherent light sources and comparable to their counterparts based on incoherent light sources. The PIC-based QPI technique opens new avenues for low-phase noise, miniature, robust, and cost-effective quantitative phase microscopy.
Photonics Research
  • Publication Date: Dec. 16, 2024
  • Vol. 13, Issue 1, 1 (2025)
Tunable broadband two-point-coupled ultra-high-Q visible and near-infrared photonic integrated resonators
Kaikai Liu, Nitesh Chauhan, Meiting Song, Mark W. Harrington, Karl D. Nelson, and Daniel J. Blumenthal
Ultra-high-quality-factor (Q) resonators are a critical component for visible to near-infrared (NIR) applications, including quantum sensing and computation, atomic timekeeping and navigation, precision metrology, microwave photonics, and fiber optic sensing and communications. Implementing such resonators in an ultra-low-loss CMOS foundry compatible photonic integration platform can enable the transitioning of critical components from the lab- to the chip-scale, such as ultra-low-linewidth lasers, optical reference cavities, scanning spectroscopy, and precision filtering. The optimal operation of these resonators must preserve the ultra-low losses and simultaneously support the desired variations in coupling over a wide range of visible and NIR wavelengths as well as provide tolerance to fabrication imperfections. We report a significant advancement in high-performance integrated resonators based on a two-point-coupling design that achieves critical coupling simultaneously at multiple wavelengths across wide wavebands and tuning of the coupling condition at any wavelength, from under-, through critically, to over-coupled. We demonstrate critical coupling at 698 nm and 780 nm in one visible-wavelength resonator and critical coupling over a wavelength range from 1550 nm to 1630 nm in a 340-million intrinsic Q 10-meter-coil waveguide resonator. Using the 340-million intrinsic Q coil resonator, we demonstrate laser stabilization that achieves six orders of magnitude reduction in the semiconductor laser frequency noise. We also report that this design can be used as a characterization technique to measure the intrinsic waveguide losses from 1300 nm to 1650 nm, resolving hydrogen-related absorption peaks at 1380 nm and 1520 nm in the resonator, giving insight to further reduce waveguide loss. The CMOS foundry compatibility of this resonator design will provide a path towards scalable system-on-chip integration for high-performance precision experiments and applications, improving reliability, and reducing size and cost.
Photonics Research
  • Publication Date: Aug. 19, 2024
  • Vol. 12, Issue 9, 1890 (2024)
Integrated spatial-temporal random speckle spectrometer with high resolution in the C-band
Shibo Xu, Jiahui Zhang, Junwei Cheng, and Jianji Dong
The increasing demand for diverse portable high-precision spectral analysis applications has driven the rapid development of spectrometer miniaturization. However, the resolutions of existing miniaturized spectrometers mostly remain at the nanometer level, posing a challenge for further enhancement towards achieving picometer-level precision. Here, we propose an integrated reconstructive spectrometer that utilizes Mach–Zehnder interferometers and a tunable diffraction network. Through random tuning in the time domain and disordered diffraction in the space domain, the random speckle patterns closely related to wavelength information are obtained to construct the transmission matrix. Experimentally, we achieve a high resolution of 100 pm and precisely reconstruct multiple narrowband and broadband spectra. Moreover, the proposed spectrometer features a simple structure, strong portability, and fast sampling speed, which has great potential in the practical application of high-precision portable spectral analysis.
Photonics Research
  • Publication Date: Jul. 01, 2024
  • Vol. 12, Issue 7, 1556 (2024)
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