Aluminum nitride is an appealing nonlinear optical material for on-chip wavelength conversion. Here we report optical frequency comb generation from high quality factor aluminum nitride micro-ring resonators integrated on silicon substrates. By engineering the waveguide structure to achieve near-zero dispersion at telecommunication wavelengths and optimizing the phase matching for four-wave mixing, frequency combs are generated with a single wavelength continuous-wave pump laser. The Kerr coefficient (n2) of aluminum nitride is further extracted from our experimental results.
Development of chip-scale optical frequency comb with the coverage from ultra-violet (UV) to mid-infrared (MIR) wavelength is of great significance. To expand the comb spectrum into the challenging UV region, a material platform with high UV transparency is crucial. In this paper, crystalline aluminum nitride (AlN)-onsapphire film is demonstrated for efficient Kerr frequency comb generation. Near-infrared (NIR) comb with nearly octave-spanning coverage and low parametric threshold is achieved in continuous-wave pumped high-quality-factor AlN microring resonators. The competition between stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) and hyperparametric oscillation is investigated, along with broadband comb generation via Raman-assisted four-wave mixing (FWM). Thanks to its wide bandgap, excellent crystalline quality as well as intrinsic quadratic and cubic susceptibilities, AlN-on-sapphire platform should be appealing for integrated nonlinear optics from MIR to UV region.
Deformed square resonators with the flat sides replaced by circular sides are proposed and demonstrated to enhance mode Q factors and adjust transverse mode intervals using the regular ray dynamic analysis and numerical simulations. Dual-transverse-mode emissions due to the ultrahigh-Q factors with different wavelength intervals are realized experimentally for AlGaInAs/InP circular-side square microlasers, and the stationary condition of the dual-mode emission is satisfied because the high-Q confined modes have totally different mode numbers. Furthermore, optical frequency combs are generated using the dual-mode lasing microlaser as a seeding light source by cascaded four-wave mixing in a highly nonlinear optical fiber.
Optical frequency combs (OFCs) at Mid-Infrared (MIR) wavelengths are essential for applications in precise spectroscopy, gas sensing and molecular fingerprinting, because of its revolutionary precision in both wavelength and frequency domain. The microresonator-based OFCs make a further step towards practical applications by including such high precision in a compact and cost-effective package. However, dispersion engineering is still a challenge for the conventional chi-3 micro-ring resonators and a MIR pump laser is required. Here we develop a different platform of a chi-2 optical superlattice box resonator to generate MIR OFC by optical parametric down conversion. With near-material-limited quality factor of 2.0*10^7, broadband MIR OFC can be generated with over 250 nm span around 2060 nm, where only a common near-infrared laser is necessary as pump. The fine teeth spacing corresponds to a measurable radio frequency beat note at 1.566 GHz, and also results in a fine spectroscopy resolution. Its linewidth is measured to be 6.1 kHz, which reveals a low comb noise that agrees well with the clean temporal waveforms. With high output power of over 370 mW, such MIR OFC is capable for long distance sensing and ranging applications.
Aluminum nitride has been shown to possess both strong Kerr nonlinearity and electro-optic Pockels effect. By combining these two effects, here we demonstrate on-chip reversible on/off switching of the optical frequency comb generated by an aluminum nitride microring resonator. We optimize the design of gating electrodes and the underneath resonator structure to effectively apply electric field without increasing the optical loss. The switching of the comb is monitored by measuring one of the frequency comb peaks while varying the electric field. The controlled comb electro-optic response is investigated for direct comparison with the transient thermal effect.
Optical frequency combs provide equidistant frequency markers in the infrared, visible and ultra-violet and can link an unknown optical frequency to a radio or microwave frequency reference. Since their inception frequency combs have triggered major advances in optical frequency metrology and precision measurements and in applications such as broadband laser-based gas sensing8 and molecular fingerprinting. Early work generated frequency combs by intra-cavity phase modulation while to date frequency combs are generated utilizing the comb-like mode structure of mode-locked lasers, whose repetition rate and carrier envelope phase can be stabilized. Here, we report an entirely novel approach in which equally spaced frequency markers are generated from a continuous wave (CW) pump laser of a known frequency interacting with the modes of a monolithic high-Q microresonator13 via the Kerr nonlinearity. The intrinsically broadband nature of parametric gain enables the generation of discrete comb modes over a 500 nm wide span (ca. 70 THz) around 1550 nm without relying on any external spectral broadening. Optical-heterodyne-based measurements reveal that cascaded parametric interactions give rise to an optical frequency comb, overcoming passive cavity dispersion. The uniformity of the mode spacing has been verified to within a relative experimental precision of 7.3*10(-18).