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arXiv · 2101.04735

Ultralow-threshold thin-film lithium niobate optical parametric oscillator

Juanjuan Lu·Ayed Al Sayem·Zheng Gong·Joshua B. Surya·Chang-Ling Zou·Hong X. Tang
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Abstract

Materials with strong $\chi^{(2)}$ optical nonlinearity, especially lithium niobate, play a critical role in building optical parametric oscillators (OPOs). However, chip-scale integration of low-loss $\chi^{(2)}$ materials remains challenging and limits the threshold power of on-chip $\chi^{(2)}$ OPO. Here we report the first on-chip lithium niobate optical parametric oscillator at the telecom wavelengths using a quasi-phase matched, high-quality microring resonator, whose threshold power ($\sim$30 $\mu$W) is 400 times lower than that in previous $\chi^{(2)}$ integrated photonics platforms. An on-chip power conversion efficiency of 11% is obtained at a pump power of 93 $\mu$W. The OPO wavelength tuning is achieved by varying the pump frequency and chip temperature. With the lowest power threshold among all on-chip OPOs demonstrated so far, as well as advantages including high conversion efficiency, flexibility in quasi-phase matching and device scalability, the thin-film lithium niobate OPO opens new opportunities for chip-based tunable classical and quantum light sources and provides an potential platform for realizing photonic neural networks.

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Juanjuan Lu, Ayed Al Sayem, Zheng Gong, Joshua B. Surya, Chang-Ling Zou, Hong X. Tang. 2021-01-12. Ultralow-threshold thin-film lithium niobate optical parametric oscillator. https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.04735

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