No Arabic abstract
As a new group of advanced 2D layered materials, bismuth oxyhalides, i.e., BiOX (X = Cl, Br, I), have recently become of great interest. In this work, we characterize the third-order optical nonlinearities of BiOBr, an important member of the BiOX family. The nonlinear absorption and Kerr nonlinearity of BiOBr nanoflakes at both 800 nm and 1550 nm are characterized via the Z-Scan technique. Experimental results show that BiOBr nanoflakes exhibit a large nonlinear absorption coefficient = b{eta} = 10-7 m/W as well as a large Kerr coefficient n2 = 10-14 m2/W. We also note that the n2 of BiOBr reverses sign from negative to positive as the wavelength is changed from 800 nm to 1550 nm. We further characterize the thickness-dependent nonlinear optical properties of BiOBr nanoflakes, finding that the magnitudes of b{eta} and n2 increase with decreasing thickness of the BiOBr nanoflakes. Finally, we integrate BiOBr nanoflakes into silicon integrated waveguides and measure their insertion loss, with the extracted waveguide propagation loss showing good agreement with mode simulations based on ellipsometry measurements. These results confirm the strong potential of BiOBr as a promising nonlinear optical material for high-performance hybrid integrated photonic devices.
Gallium nitride (GaN) as a wide-band gap material has been widely used in solid-state lighting. Thanks to its high nonlinearity and high refractive index contrast, GaN-on-insulator (GaNOI) is also a promising platform for nonlinear optical applications. Despite its intriguing optical proprieties, nonlinear applications of GaN have rarely been studied due to the relatively high optical loss of GaN waveguides (2 dB/cm). In this letter, we report GaNOI microresonator with intrinsic quality factor over 2 million, corresponding to an optical loss of 0.26 dB/cm. Parametric oscillation threshold power as low as 8.8 mW is demonstrated, and the experimentally extracted nonlinear index of GaN at telecom wavelengths is estimated to be n2 = 1.2*10 -18 m2W-1, which is comparable with silicon. Single soliton generation in GaN is implemented by an auxiliary laser pumping scheme, so as to mitigate the high thermorefractive effect in GaN. The large intrinsic nonlinear refractive index, together with its broadband transparency window and high refractive index contrast, make GaNOI a most balanced platform for chip-scale nonlinear applications.
Integrated photonics plays a central role in modern science and technology, enabling experiments from nonlinear science to quantum information, ultraprecise measurements and sensing, and advanced applications like data communication and signal processing. Optical materials with favorable properties are essential for nanofabrication of integrated-photonics devices. Here we describe a material for integrated nonlinear photonics, tantalum pentoxide (Ta$_2$O$_5$, hereafter tantala), which offers low intrinsic material stress, low optical loss, and efficient access to Kerr-nonlinear processes. We utilize >800-nm thick tantala films deposited via ion-beam sputtering on oxidized silicon wafers. The tantala films contain a low residual tensile stress of 38 MPa, and they offer a Kerr index $n_2$=6.2(23)$times10^{-19}$ m$^2$/W, which is approximately a factor of three higher than silicon nitride. We fabricate integrated nonlinear resonators and waveguides without the cracking challenges that are prevalent in stoichiometric silicon nitride. The tantala resonators feature an optical quality factor up to $3.8times10^6$, which enables us to generate ultrabroad-bandwidth Kerr-soliton frequency combs with low threshold power. Moreover, tantala waveguides enable supercontinuum generation across the near-infrared from low-energy, ultrafast seed pulses. Our work introduces a versatile material platform for integrated, low-loss nanophotonics that can be broadly applied and enable heterogeneous integration.
We report enhanced nonlinear optics in complementary metal oxide semiconductor compatible photonic platforms through the use of layered two dimensional (2D) graphene oxide (GO) films. We integrate GO films with silicon on insulator nanowires (SOI), high index doped silica glass (Hydex) and silicon nitride (SiN) waveguides and ring resonators, to demonstrate an enhanced optical nonlinearity including Kerr nonlinearity and four wave mixing (FWM). The GO films are integrated using a large area, transfer free, layer by layer method while the film placement and size are controlled by photolithography. In SOI nanowires we observe a dramatic enhancement in both the Kerr nonlinearity and nonlinear figure of merit (FOM) due to the highly nonlinear GO films. Self phase modulation (SPM) measurements show significant spectral broadening enhancement for SOI nanowires coated with patterned films of GO. The dependence of GO Kerr nonlinearity on layer number and pulse energy shows trends of the layered GO films from 2D to quasi bulk like behavior. The nonlinear parameter of GO coated SOI nanowires is increased 16 fold, with the nonlinear FOM increasing over 20 times to a FOM greater than 5. We also observe an improved FWM efficiency in SiN waveguides integrated with 2D layered GO films. FWM measurements for samples with different numbers of GO layers and at different pump powers are performed, achieving up to 7.3 dB conversion efficiency (CE) enhancement for a uniformly coated device with 1 layer of GO and 9.1 dB for a patterned device with 5 layers of GO. These results reveal the strong potential of GO films to improve the nonlinear optics of silicon, Hydex and SiN photonic devices.
Silicon nitride (SiN) waveguides with ultra-low optical loss enable integrated photonic applications including low noise, narrow linewidth lasers, chip-scale nonlinear photonics, and microwave photonics. Lasers are key components to SiN photonic integrated circuits (PICs), but are difficult to fully integrate with low-index SiN waveguides due to their large mismatch with the high-index III-V gain materials. The recent demonstration of multilayer heterogeneous integration provides a practical solution and enabled the first-generation of lasers fully integrated with SiN waveguides. However a laser with high device yield and high output power at telecommunication wavelengths, where photonics applications are clustered, is still missing, hindered by large mode transition loss, nonoptimized cavity design, and a complicated fabrication process. Here, we report high-performance lasers on SiN with tens of milliwatts output through the SiN waveguide and sub-kHz fundamental linewidth, addressing all of the aforementioned issues. We also show Hertz-level linewidth lasers are achievable with the developed integration techniques. These lasers, together with high-$Q$ SiN resonators, mark a milestone towards a fully-integrated low-noise silicon nitride photonics platform. This laser should find potential applications in LIDAR, microwave photonics and coherent optical communications.
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 development in the past few years, some of these thin-film LN devices, such as optical modulators and nonlinear wavelength converters, have already outperformed their legacy counterparts realized in bulk LN crystals. Furthermore, the nanophotonic integration enabled ultra-low-loss resonators in LN, which unlocked many novel applications such as optical frequency combs and quantum transducers. In this Review, we cover -- from basic principles to the state of the art -- the diverse aspects of integrated thin-film LN photonics, including the materials, basic passive components, and various active devices based on electro-optics, all-optical nonlinearities, and acousto-optics. We also identify challenges that this platform is currently facing and point out future opportunities. The field of integrated LNOI photonics is advancing rapidly and poised to make critical impacts on a broad range of applications in communication, signal processing, and quantum information.