A 16-channel optical phased array is fabricated on a gallium arsenide photonic integrated circuit platform with a low-complexity process. Tested with a 1064 nm external laser, the array demonstrates 0.92° beamwidth, 15.3° grating-lobe-free steering range, and 12 dB sidelobe level. Based on a reverse biased p-i-n structure, component phase modulators are 3 mm long with DC power consumption of less than 5 $μ$W and greater than 770 MHz electro-optical bandwidth. Individual 4-mm-long phase modulators based on the same structure demonstrate single-sided V$π{\cdot}$L modulation efficiency ranging from 0.5 V${\cdot}$cm to 1.23 V${\cdot}$cm when tested at wavelengths from 980 nm to 1360 nm.
Gallium Arsenide and related compound semiconductors lie at the heart of optoelectronics and integrated laser technologies. Shaped at the micro and nano-scale, they allow strong interaction with quantum dots and quantum wells, and promise to result in stunning devices. However gallium arsenide optical structures presently exhibit lower performances than their silicon-based counterparts, notably in nanophotonics where the surface plays a chief role. Here we report on advanced surface control of miniature gallium arsenide optical resonators, using two distinct techniques that produce permanent r…
Piezoelectric optomechanical platforms present one of the most promising routes towards efficient transduction of signals from the microwave to the optical frequency domains. New device architectures need to be developed in order to achieve the stringent requirements for building efficient quantum transducers. In this work, we utilize the mechanical supermode principle to improve the overall microwave to optical transduction efficiency, by fabricating Lamb wave resonators that are hybridized with the mechanical breathing modes of a rib waveguide in a suspended gallium arsenide (GaAs) photonic …
The spectacular success of silicon-based photonic integrated circuits (PICs) in the past decade naturally begs the question of whether similar fabrication procedures can be applied to other material platforms with more desirable optical properties. In this work, we demonstrate the individual passive components (grating couplers, waveguides, multi-mode interferometers and ring resonators) necessary for building large scale integrated circuits in suspended gallium arsenide (GaAs). Implementing PICs in suspended GaAs is a viable route towards achieving optimal system performance in areas with str…
Whispering Gallery modes in bulk cylindrical Gallium Arsenide and Gallium Phosphide samples have been examined both in darkness and under white light at cryogenics temperatures < 50 K. In both cases persistent photoconductivity was observed after initially exposing semiconductors to white light from a halogen lamp. Photoconductance decay time constants for GaP and GaAs were determined to be 0.900 +/- 0.081 ns and 1.098 +/- 0.063 ns, respectively, using this method.
Whispering Gallery modes in bulk cylindrical Gallium Arsenide and Gallium Phosphide samples have been examined both in darkness and under white light at 50 K. In both samples we observed change in permittivity under light and dark conditions. This results from a change in the polarization state of the semiconductor, which is consistent with a free electron-hole creation/recombination process. The permittivity of the semiconductor is modified by free photocarriers in the surface layers of the sample which is the region sampled by Whispering Gallery modes.
An interesting property of high harmonic generation in solids is its laser polarization dependent nature which in turn provides information about the crystal and band structure of the generation medium. Here we report on the linear polarization dependence of high-order harmonic generation from a gallium arsenide crystal. Interestingly, we observe a significant evolution of the anisotropic response of above bandgap harmonics as a function of the laser intensity. We attribute this change to fundamental microscopic effects of the emission process comprising a competition between intraband and int…
We analyze the magnitude of the radiation pressure and electrostrictive stresses exerted by light confined inside GaAs semiconductor WGM optomechanical disk resonators, through analytical and numerical means, and find the electrostrictive force to be of prime importance. We investigate the geometric and photoelastic optomechanical coupling resulting respectively from the deformation of the disk boundary and from the strain-induced refractive index changes in the material, for various mechanical modes of the disks. Photoelastic optomechanical coupling is shown to be a predominant coupling mecha…
Whispering gallery modes in GaAs disk resonators reach half a million of optical quality factor. These high Qs remain still well below the ultimate design limit set by bending losses. Here we investigate the origin of residual optical dissipation in these devices. A Transmission Electron Microscope analysis is combined with an improved Volume Current Method to precisely quantify optical scattering losses by roughness and waviness of the structures, and gauge their importance relative to intrinsic material and radiation losses. The analysis also provides a qualitative description of the surface…
We report on the fabrication of quantum photonic integrated circuits based on suspended GaAs membranes. The fabrication process consists of a single lithographic step followed by inductively-coupled-plasma dry etching through an electron-beam-resist mask and wet etching of a sacrificial layer. This method does not require depositing, etching, and stripping a hard mask, greatly reducing fabrication time and costs, while at the same time yielding devices of excellent structural quality. We discuss in detail the procedures for cleaning the resist residues caused by the plasma etching and present …
Integrated quantum photonics is a promising approach for future practical and large-scale quantum information processing technologies, with the prospect of on-chip generation, manipulation and measurement of complex quantum states of light. The gallium arsenide (GaAs) material system is a promising technology platform, and has already successfully demonstrated key components including waveguide integrated single-photon sources and integrated single-photon detectors. However, quantum circuits capable of manipulating quantum states of light have so far not been investigated in this material syst…
Hybrid silicon nanowires with an integrated light-emitting segment can significantly advance nanoelectronics and nanophotonics. They would combine transport and optical characteristics in a nanoscale device, which can operate in the fundamental single-electron and single-photon regime. III-V materials, such as direct bandgap gallium-arsenide, are excellent candidates for such optical segments. However, interfacing them with silicon during crystal growth is a major challenge, because of the lattice mismatch, different expansion coefficients and the formation of anti-phase boundaries. Here, we d…
Thermal noise is a limiting factor in many high-precision optical experiments. A search is underway for novel optical materials with reduced thermal noise. One such pair of materials, gallium arsenide and aluminum-alloyed gallium arsenide (collectively referred to as AlGaAs), shows promise for its low Brownian noise when compared to conventional materials such as silica and tantala. However, AlGaAs has the potential to produce a high level of thermo-optic noise. We have fabricated a set of AlGaAs crystalline coatings, transferred to fused silica substrates, whose layer structure has been optim…
We have designed and fabricated a shallow-etched grating on gallium arsenide nanomembranes for efficient chip-to-fiber coupling in quantum photonic integrated circuits. Experimental results show that the grating provides a fiber-coupling efficiency of >60 %, a greatly suppressed back reflection of <1 % for the designed wavelength of 930 nm, and a 3-dB bandwidth of >43 nm. Highly efficient single-photon collection from embedded indium arsenide quantum dots to an optical fiber was realized with the designed grating, showing an average sixfold increase in photon count compared to commonly used ci…
We develop a thermally tunable hybrid photonic platform comprising gallium arsenide (GaAs) photonic crystal cavities, silicon nitride (SiN$_x$) grating couplers and waveguides, and chromium (Cr) microheaters on an integrated photonic chip. The GaAs photonic crystal cavities are evanescently connected to a common bus waveguide, separating the computation and communication layers. The microheaters are designed to continuously and reversibly tune distant photonic crystal cavities to a common resonance. This architecture can be implemented in a coherent optical network for dedicated optical comput…
We demonstrate monolithic aluminum gallium arsenide (AlGaAs) optical anoantennas. Using a selective oxidation technique, we fabricate such epitaxial semiconductor nanoparticles on an aluminum oxide substrate. Second harmonic generation from an AlGaAs nanocylinder of height h=400 nm and varying radius pumped with femtosecond pulses delivered at 1554-nm wavelength has been measured, revealing a peak conversion efficiency exceeding 10-5 for nanocylinders with an otpimized geometry.
We measure the lasing dynamics of single and coupled photonic crystal nanocavity array lasers fabricated in the indium gallium arsenide phosphide material system. Under short optical excitation, single cavity lasers produce pulses as fast as 11 ps (FWHM), while coupled cavity lasers show significantly longer lasing duration which is not explained by a simple rate equations model. A Finite Difference Time Domain simulation including carrier gain and diffusion suggests that asynchronous lasing across the nanocavity array extends the laser's pulse duration.
Aluminum gallium arsenide has highly desirable properties for integrated parametric optical interactions: large material nonlinearities, maturely established nanoscopic structuring through epitaxial growth and lithography, and a large band gap for broadband low-loss operation. However, its full potential for record-strength nonlinear interactions is only released when the semiconductor is embedded within a dielectric cladding to produce highly confining waveguides. From simulations of such, we present second and third order pair generation that could improve upon state-of-the-art quantum optic…
The combination of nonlinear and integrated photonics has recently seen a surge with Kerr frequency comb generation in micro-resonators as the most significant achievement. Efficient nonlinear photonic chips have myriad applications including high speed optical signal processing, on-chip multi-wavelength lasers, metrology, molecular spectroscopy, and quantum information science. Aluminium gallium arsenide (AlGaAs) exhibits very high material nonlinearity and low nonlinear loss when operated below half its bandgap energy. However, difficulties in device processing and low device effective nonli…
Enhancing light-matter interactions on a chip is of paramount importance to study nano- and quantum optics effects and to realise integrated devices, for instance, for classical and quantum photonics, sensing and energy harvesting applications. Engineered nano-devices enable the efficient confinement of light and the control of the spontaneous emission dynamics of single emitters, which is crucial for cavity quantum electrodynamics experiments and for the development of classical and quantum light sources. Here, we report on the demonstration of enhanced light-matter interaction and Purcell ef…
Efficient, low threshold, and compact semiconductor laser sources are being investigated for many applications in high-speed communications, information processing, and optical interconnects. The best edge-emitting and vertical cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) have thresholds on the order of 100 \muA[1,2] but dissipate too much power to be practical for many applications, particularly optical interconnects[3]. Optically pumped photonic crystal (PC) nanocavity lasers represent the state of the art in low-threshold lasers[4,5]; however, in order to be practical, techniques to electrically…
Recent breakthroughs in solid-state photonic quantum technologies enable generating and detecting single photons with near-unity efficiency as required for a range of photonic quantum technologies. The lack of methods to simultaneously generate and control photons within the same chip, however, has formed a main obstacle to achieving efficient multi-qubit gates and to harness the advantages of chip-scale quantum photonics. Here we propose and demonstrate an integrated voltage-controlled phase shifter based on the electro-optic effect in suspended photonic waveguides with embedded quantum emitt…
