We demonstrate acousto-optic phase modulators in X-cut lithium niobate films on sapphire, detailing the dependence of the piezoelectric and optomechanical coupling coefficients on the crystal orientation. This new platform supports highly confined, strongly piezoelectric mechanical waves without suspensions, making it a promising candidate for broadband and efficient integrated acousto-optic devices, circuits, and systems.
Electrically driven acousto-optic devices that provide beam deflection and optical frequency shifting have broad applications from pulse synthesis to heterodyne detection. Commercially available acousto-optic modulators are based on bulk materials and consume Watts of radio frequency power. Here, we demonstrate an integrated 3-GHz acousto-optic frequency shifter on thin-film lithium niobate, featuring a carrier suppression over 30 dB. Further, we demonstrate a gigahertz-spaced optical frequency comb featuring more than 200 lines over a 0.6-THz optical bandwidth by recirculating the light in an…
Acousto-optic interactions involving propagating phonons can break the time-reversal and frequency-modulation symmetry of light. However, conventional acousto-optic modulators based on bulk materials have frequency bandwidth limited to hundreds of megahertz due to their large structural sizes. Here, we experimentally demonstrate gigahertz single-sideband acousto-optic modulation on an etchless lithium niobate integrated platform by using photonic bound states in the continuum. The upper- or lower-sideband modulation of light can be obtained conveniently by choosing specific combinations of inp…
A highly efficient on-chip acousto-optic modulator, as a key component, occupies an exceptional position in microwave-to-optical conversion. Homogeneous thin-film lithium niobate is preferentially employed to build the suspended configuration forming the acoustic resonant cavity to improve the modulation efficiency of the device. However, the limited cavity length and complex fabrication recipe of the suspended prototype restrain further breakthrough in the modulation efficiency and impose challenges for waveguide fabrication. In this work, based on a nonsuspended thin-film lithium niobate-cha…
We investigate the dependence of photonic waveguide propagation loss on the thickness of the buried oxide layer in Y-cut lithium niobate on insulator substrate to identify trade-offs between optical losses and electromechanical coupling of surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices for acousto-optic applications. Simulations show that a thicker oxide layer reduces the waveguide loss but lowers the electromechanical coupling coefficient of the SAW device. Optical racetrack resonators with different lengths were fabricated by argon plasma etching to experimentally extract waveguide losses. By increasin…
Push-Pull acousto-optic modulator based on non-suspended thin-film lithium niobate on silicon substrate
Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University（普渡大学埃尔莫电气与计算机工程学院）；Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Michigan（密歇根大学电气与计算机工程系）
We obtained an optical-to-terahertz (THz) energy conversion efficiency of 0.5% using the tilted-pulse-front technique in lithium niobate at a cryogenically cooled temperature of 100 K pumped by amplified Ti:sapphire laser pulses with ~150 fs pulse duration at 800 nm wavelength. Compared with the optimized conversion efficiency of 0.18% achieved at room temperature, we achieved more than 2.5 times enhancement in conversion efficiency upon cryogenically cooling the crystal due to reduction of THz absorption. Further improvements to the conversion efficiency can be made by optimizing the out-coup…
Periodically poled thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) waveguides have emerged as a leading platform for highly efficient frequency conversion in the near-infrared. However, the commonly used silica bottom-cladding results in high absorption loss at wavelengths beyond 2.5 $μ$m. In this work, we demonstrate efficient frequency conversion in a TFLN-on-sapphire platform, which features high transparency up to 4.5 $μ$m. In particular, we report generating mid-infrared light up to 3.66 $μ$m via difference-frequency generation of a fixed 1-$μ$m source and a tunable telecom source, with normalized effic…
We experimentally investigate the limits to 800 nm-to-terahertz (THz) energy conversion in lithium niobate at room temperature driven by amplified Ti:Sapphire laser pulses with tilted-pulse-front. The influence of the pump central wavelength, pulse duration, and fluence on THz generation is studied. We achieved a high peak efficiency of 0.12% using transform limited 150 fs pulses and observed saturation of the optical to THz conversion efficiency at a fluence of 15 mJ/cm2. We experimentally identify two main limitations for the scaling of optical-to-THz conversion efficiencies: (i) the large s…
We demonstrate a collinear acousto-optic modulator in a suspended film of lithium niobate employing a high-confinement, wavelength-scale waveguide. By strongly confining the optical and mechanical waves, this modulator improves by orders of magnitude a figure-of-merit that accounts for both acousto-optic and electro-mechanical efficiency. Our device demonstration marks a significant technological advance in acousto-optics that promises a novel class of compact and low-power frequency shifters, tunable filters, non-magnetic isolators, and beam deflectors.
Candidate overtone shear horizontal SAW resonators in thin-film lithium niobate for intermodal acousto-optic modulation
Wangzhijiang Innovation Center for Laser, Aerospace Laser Technology and System Department, Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院上海光学精密机械研究所）；Center of Materials Science and Optoelectronics Engineering, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学物质科学与光电技术研究院）；School of Information Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University（上海科技大学信息科学与技术学院）
Acoustic devices play an important role in classical information processing. The slower speed and lower losses of mechanical waves enable compact and efficient elements for delaying, filtering, and storing of electric signals at radio and microwave frequencies. Discovering ways of better controlling the propagation of phonons on a chip is an important step towards enabling larger scale phononic circuits and systems. We present a platform, inspired by decades of advances in integrated photonics, that utilizes the strong piezoelectric effect in a thin film of lithium niobate on sapphire to excit…
Quantum networks are likely to have a profound impact on the way we compute and communicate in the future. In order to wire together superconducting quantum processors over kilometer-scale distances, we need transducers that can generate entanglement between the microwave and optical domains with high fidelity. We present an integrated electro-optic transducer that combines low-loss lithium niobate photonics with superconducting microwave resonators on a sapphire substrate. Our triply-resonant device operates in a dilution refrigerator and converts microwave photons to optical photons with an …
We report on backward second-harmonic-generation in bulk periodically poled congruent lithium niobate with a 3.2 microns period. A tunable continuous-wave Ti:sapphire laser allowed us exciting two resonant quasi-phase-matching orders in the backward configuration. The resonances were also resolved by temperature tuning and interpolated with standard theory to extract relevant information on the sample.
Lithium Niobate (LN or just niobate) thin-film micro-photonic resonators have promising prospects in many applications including high efficiency electro-optic modulators, optomechanics and nonlinear optics. This paper presents free-standing thin-film lithium niobate photonic resonators on a silicon platform using MEMS fabrication technology. We fabricated a 35um radius niobate disk resonator that exhibits high intrinsic optical quality factor (Q) of 484,000. Exploiting the optomechanical interaction from the released free-standing structure and high optical Q, we were able to demonstrate acous…
We demonstrate efficient multicycle terahertz pulse generation at 14.6 THz from large-area lithium niobate crystals by using high-energy (up to 2 J) femtosecond Ti:sapphire laser pulses. Such terahertz radiation is produced by phase-matched optical rectification in lithium niobate. Experimentally, we achieve maximal terahertz energy of 0.71 mJ with conversion efficiency of $\sim$0.04%. We also find that the effective interaction length for optimal terahertz conversion is fundamentally limited by terahertz absorption, laser pulse stretching by material dispersion, and terahertz-induced nonlinea…
Superconducting cavity electro-optics (EO) presents a promising route to coherently convert microwave and optical photons and distribute quantum entanglement between superconducting circuits over long-distance through an optical network. High EO conversion efficiency demands transduction materials with strong Pockels effect and excellent optical transparency. Thin-film Lithium Niobate (TFLN) offers these desired characteristics however so far has only delivered unidirectional conversion with efficiencies on the order of $10^{-5}$, largely impacted by its prominent photorefractive (PR) effect a…
Integrated photonics operating at visible-near-infrared (VNIR) wavelengths offer scalable platforms for advancing optical systems for addressing atomic clocks, sensors, and quantum computers. The complexity of free-space control optics causes limited addressability of atoms and ions, and this remains an impediment on scalability and cost. Networks of Mach-Zehnder interferometers can overcome challenges in addressing atoms by providing high-bandwidth electro-optic control of multiple output beams. Here, we demonstrate a VNIR Mach-Zehnder interferometer on lithium niobate on sapphire with a CMOS…
We demonstrate conversion of up to 4.5 GHz-frequency microwaves to 1500 nm-wavelength light using optomechanical interactions on suspended thin-film lithium niobate. Our method utilizes an interdigital transducer that drives a free-standing 100 $μ$m-long thin-film acoustic resonator to modulate light travelling in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer or racetrack cavity. Owing to the strong microwave-to-acoustic coupling offered by the transducer in conjunction with the strong photoelastic, piezoelectric, and electro-optic effects of lithium niobate, we achieve a half-wave voltage of $V_π$ = 4.6 V an…
The capability to modulate the intensity of an optical beam has scientific and practical significance. In this work, we demonstrate Y-Z cut lithium niobate acousto-optic modulators with record-high modulation efficiency, requiring only $1.5~\text{W}/\text{cm}^2$ for 100% modulation at 7 MHz. These modulators use a simple fabrication process; coating the top and bottom surfaces of a thin lithium niobate wafer with transparent electrodes. The fundamental shear acoustic mode of the wafer is excited through the transparent electrodes by applying voltage with frequency corresponding to the resonant…
Thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) is an emerging platform for compact, low-power nonlinear-optical devices, and has been used extensively for near-infrared frequency conversion. Recent work has extended these devices to mid-infrared wavelengths, where broadly tunable sources may be used for chemical sensing. To this end, we demonstrate efficient and broadband difference frequency generation between a fixed 1-micron pump and a tunable telecom source in uniformly-poled TFLN-on-sapphire by harnessing the dispersion-engineering available in tightly-confining waveguides. We show a simultaneous 1-2 o…
Lithium niobate (LN), an outstanding and versatile material, has influenced our daily life for decades: from enabling high-speed optical communications that form the backbone of the Internet to realizing radio-frequency filtering used in our cell phones. This half-century-old material is currently embracing a revolution in thin-film LN integrated photonics. The success of manufacturing wafer-scale, high-quality, thin films of LN on insulator (LNOI), accompanied with breakthroughs in nanofabrication techniques, have made high-performance integrated nanophotonic components possible. With rapid d…
Optical isolator is an indispensable component of almost any optical system and is used to protect a laser from unwanted reflections for phase-stable coherent operation. The development of chip-scale optical systems, powered by semiconductor lasers integrated on the same chip, has resulted in a need for a fully integrated optical isolator. However, conventional approaches based on application of magneto-optic materials to break the reciprocity and provide required isolation have significant challenges in terms of material processing and insertion loss. As a result, many magnetic-free approache…
Future quantum networks in which superconducting quantum processors are connected via optical links, will require microwave-to-optical photon converters that preserve entanglement. A doubly-resonant electro-optic modulator (EOM) is a promising platform to realize this conversion. Here, we present our progress towards building such a modulator by demonstrating the optically-resonant half of the device. We demonstrate high quality factor ring, disk and photonic crystal resonators using a hybrid silicon-on-lithium-niobate material system. Optical quality factors up to 730,000 are achieved, corres…
Focusing Surface-Acoustic-Wave Resonators on Thin-Film Lithium Niobate with Transverse-Mode Suppression
RIKEN Center for Quantum Computing (RQC)（理化学研究所量子计算中心）；Institute for Chemical Research, Kyoto University（京都大学化学研究科）；Center for Spintronics Research Network, Institute for Chemical Research, Kyoto University（京都大学化学研究科自旋电子学研究网络中心）；International Christian University（国际基督教大学）；National Institute of Information and Communication Technology（信息通信研究机构）；Department of Applied Physics, Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo（东京大学工学部应用物理系）；Komaba Institute for Science (KIS), The University of Tokyo（东京大学驹场科学研究所）；Inamori Research Institute for Science (InaRIS), Organization, Kyoto-shi, Kyoto（京都市稻盛科学研究所）
