Bidirectional microwave-optical transduction based on integration of high-overtone bulk acoustic resonators and photonic circuits.

Coherent interconversion between microwave and optical frequencies can serve as both classical and quantum interfaces for computing, communication, and sensing. Here, we present a compact microwave-optical transducer based on monolithic integration of piezoelectric actuators on silicon nitride photonic circuits. Such an actuator couples microwave signals to a high-overtone bulk acoustic resonator defined by the silica cladding of the optical waveguide core, suspended to enhance electromechanical and optomechanical couplings.

Free-electron interaction with nonlinear optical states in microresonators.

The short de Broglie wavelength and strong interaction empower free electrons to probe structures and excitations in materials and biomolecules. Recently, electron-photon interactions have enabled new optical manipulation schemes for electron beams. In this work, we demonstrate the interaction of electrons with nonlinear optical states inside a photonic chip-based microresonator.

High density lithium niobate photonic integrated circuits.

Photonic integrated circuits have the potential to pervade into multiple applications traditionally limited to bulk optics. Of particular interest for new applications are ferroelectrics such as Lithium Niobate, which exhibit a large Pockels effect, but are difficult to process via dry etching. Here we demonstrate that diamond-like carbon (DLC) is a superior material for the manufacturing of photonic integrated circuits based on ferroelectrics, specifically LiNbO.

A heterogeneously integrated lithium niobate-on-silicon nitride photonic platform.

The availability of thin-film lithium niobate on insulator (LNOI) and advances in processing have led to the emergence of fully integrated LiNbO electro-optic devices. Yet to date, LiNbO photonic integrated circuits have mostly been fabricated using non-standard etching techniques and partially etched waveguides, that lack the reproducibility achieved in silicon photonics. Widespread application of thin-film LiNbO requires a reliable solution with precise lithographic control.

Ultrafast tunable lasers using lithium niobate integrated photonics.

Early works and recent advances in thin-film lithium niobate (LiNbO) on insulator have enabled low-loss photonic integrated circuits, modulators with improved half-wave voltage, electro-optic frequency combs and on-chip electro-optic devices, with applications ranging from microwave photonics to microwave-to-optical quantum interfaces. Although recent advances have demonstrated tunable integrated lasers based on LiNbO (refs. ), the full potential of this platform to demonstrate frequency-agile, narrow-linewidth integrated lasers has not been achieved.

A photonic integrated continuous-travelling-wave parametric amplifier.

The ability to amplify optical signals is of pivotal importance across science and technology typically using rare-earth-doped fibres or gain media based on III-V semiconductors. A different physical process to amplify optical signals is to use the Kerr nonlinearity of optical fibres through parametric interactions. Pioneering work demonstrated continuous-wave net-gain travelling-wave parametric amplification in fibres, enabling, for example, phase-sensitive (that is, noiseless) amplification, link span increase, signal regeneration and nonlinear phase noise mitigation.

Cavity-mediated electron-photon pairs.

Quantum information, communication, and sensing rely on the generation and control of quantum correlations in complementary degrees of freedom. Free electrons coupled to photonics promise novel hybrid quantum technologies, although single-particle correlations and entanglement have yet to be shown. In this work, we demonstrate the preparation of electron-photon pair states using the phase-matched interaction of free electrons with the evanescent vacuum field of a photonic chip-based optical microresonator.

Low-noise frequency-agile photonic integrated lasers for coherent ranging.

Frequency modulated continuous wave laser ranging (FMCW LiDAR) enables distance mapping with simultaneous position and velocity information, is immune to stray light, can achieve long range, operate in the eye-safe region of 1550 nm and achieve high sensitivity. Despite its advantages, it is compounded by the simultaneous requirement of both narrow linewidth low noise lasers that can be precisely chirped. While integrated silicon-based lasers, compatible with wafer scale manufacturing in large volumes at low cost, have experienced major advances and are now employed on a commercial scale in data centers, and impressive progress has led to integrated lasers with (ultra) narrow sub-100 Hz-level intrinsic linewidth based on optical feedback from photonic circuits, these lasers presently lack fast nonthermal tuning, i.

A photonic integrated circuit-based erbium-doped amplifier.

Erbium-doped fiber amplifiers revolutionized long-haul optical communications and laser technology. Erbium ions could provide a basis for efficient optical amplification in photonic integrated circuits but their use remains impractical as a result of insufficient output power. We demonstrate a photonic integrated circuit-based erbium amplifier reaching 145 milliwatts of output power and more than 30 decibels of small-signal gain-on par with commercial fiber amplifiers and surpassing state-of-the-art III-V heterogeneously integrated semiconductor amplifiers.

Platicon microcomb generation using laser self-injection locking.

The past decade has witnessed major advances in the development and system-level applications of photonic integrated microcombs, that are coherent, broadband optical frequency combs with repetition rates in the millimeter-wave to terahertz domain. Most of these advances are based on harnessing of dissipative Kerr solitons (DKS) in microresonators with anomalous group velocity dispersion (GVD). However, microcombs can also be generated with normal GVD using localized structures that are referred to as dark pulses, switching waves or platicons.

Protected generation of dissipative Kerr solitons in supermodes of coupled optical microresonators.

A photonic dimer composed of two evanescently coupled high- microresonators is a fundamental element of multimode soliton lattices. It has demonstrated a variety of emergent nonlinear phenomena, including supermode soliton generation and soliton hopping. Here, we present another aspect of dissipative soliton generation in coupled resonators, revealing the advantages of this system over conventional single-resonator platforms.

Integrated photonics enables continuous-beam electron phase modulation.

Integrated photonics facilitates extensive control over fundamental light-matter interactions in manifold quantum systems including atoms, trapped ions, quantum dots and defect centres. Ultrafast electron microscopy has recently made free-electron beams the subject of laser-based quantum manipulation and characterization, enabling the observation of free-electron quantum walks, attosecond electron pulses and holographic electromagnetic imaging. Chip-based photonics promises unique applications in nanoscale quantum control and sensing but remains to be realized in electron microscopy.

Laser soliton microcombs heterogeneously integrated on silicon.

Silicon photonics enables wafer-scale integration of optical functionalities on chip. Silicon-based laser frequency combs can provide integrated sources of mutually coherent laser lines for terabit-per-second transceivers, parallel coherent light detection and ranging, or photonics-assisted signal processing. We report heterogeneously integrated laser soliton microcombs combining both indium phospide/silicon (InP/Si) semiconductor lasers and ultralow-loss silicon nitride (SiN) microresonators on a monolithic silicon substrate.

Difference-frequency generation in optically poled silicon nitride waveguides.

Difference-frequency generation (DFG) is elemental for nonlinear parametric processes such as optical parametric oscillation and is instrumental for generating coherent light at long wavelengths, especially in the middle infrared. Second-order nonlinear frequency conversion processes like DFG require a second-order susceptibility , which is absent in centrosymmetric materials, e.g.

High-yield, wafer-scale fabrication of ultralow-loss, dispersion-engineered silicon nitride photonic circuits.

Low-loss photonic integrated circuits and microresonators have enabled a wide range of applications, such as narrow-linewidth lasers and chip-scale frequency combs. To translate these into a widespread technology, attaining ultralow optical losses with established foundry manufacturing is critical. Recent advances in integrated SiN photonics have shown that ultralow-loss, dispersion-engineered microresonators with quality factors Q > 10 × 10 can be attained at die-level throughput.

Low-Loss Integrated Nanophotonic Circuits with Layered Semiconductor Materials.

Monolayer transition-metal dichalcogenides with direct bandgaps are emerging candidates for optoelectronic devices, such as photodetectors, light-emitting diodes, and electro-optic modulators. Here we report a low-loss integrated platform incorporating molybdenum ditelluride monolayers with silicon nitride photonic microresonators. We achieve microresonator quality factors >3 × 10 in the telecommunication O- to E-bands.

Monolithic piezoelectric control of soliton microcombs.

High-speed actuation of laser frequency is critical in applications using lasers and frequency combs, and is a prerequisite for phase locking, frequency stabilization and stability transfer among optical carriers. For example, high-bandwidth feedback control of frequency combs is used in optical-frequency synthesis, frequency division and optical clocks. Soliton microcombs have emerged as chip-scale frequency comb sources, and have been used in system-level demonstrations.

Integrated turnkey soliton microcombs.

Optical frequency combs have a wide range of applications in science and technology. An important development for miniature and integrated comb systems is the formation of dissipative Kerr solitons in coherently pumped high-quality-factor optical microresonators. Such soliton microcombs have been applied to spectroscopy, the search for exoplanets, optical frequency synthesis, time keeping and other areas.

Chip-based soliton microcomb module using a hybrid semiconductor laser.

Photonic chip-based soliton microcombs have shown rapid progress and have already been used in many system-level applications. There has been substantial progress in realizing soliton microcombs that rely on compact laser sources, culminating in devices that only utilize a semiconductor gain chip or a self-injection-locked laser diode as the pump source. However, generating single solitons with electronically detectable repetition rates from a compact laser module has remained challenging.

Observation of Stimulated Brillouin Scattering in Silicon Nitride Integrated Waveguides.

Silicon nitride (Si_{3}N_{4}) has emerged as a promising material for integrated nonlinear photonics and has been used for broadband soliton microcombs and low-pulse-energy supercontinuum generation. Therefore, understanding all nonlinear optical properties of Si_{3}N_{4} is important. So far, only stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) has not yet been reported.

Giant Rashba-Type Spin Splitting in Ferroelectric GeTe(111).

Photoelectron spectroscopy in combination with piezoforce microscopy reveals that the helicity of Rashba bands is coupled to the nonvolatile ferroelectric polarization of GeTe(111). A novel surface Rashba band is found and fingerprints of a bulk Rashba band are identified by comparison with density functional theory calculations.