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arXiv · 2103.02725

Laser soliton microcombs on silicon

Chao Xiang·Junqiu Liu·Joel Guo·Lin Chang·Rui Ning Wang·Wenle Weng·Jonathan Peters·Weiqiang Xie·Zeyu Zhang·Johann Riemensberger·Jennifer Selvidge·Tobias J. Kippenberg·John E. Bowers
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Abstract

Silicon photonics enables wafer-scale integration of optical functionalities on chip. A silicon-based laser frequency combs could significantly expand the applications of silicon photonics, by providing integrated sources of mutually coherent laser lines for terabit-per-second transceivers, parallel coherent LiDAR, or photonics-assisted signal processing. Here, we report on heterogeneously integrated laser soliton microcombs combining both InP/Si semiconductor lasers and ultralow-loss silicon nitride microresonators on monolithic silicon substrate. Thousands of devices are produced from a single wafer using standard CMOS techniques. Using on-chip electrical control of the microcomb-laser relative optical phase, these devices can output single-soliton microcombs with 100 GHz repetition rate. Our approach paves the way for large-volume, low-cost manufacturing of chip-based frequency combs for next-generation high-capacity transceivers, datacenters, space and mobile platforms.

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Chao Xiang, Junqiu Liu, Joel Guo, Lin Chang, Rui Ning Wang, Wenle Weng, Jonathan Peters, Weiqiang Xie, Zeyu Zhang, Johann Riemensberger, Jennifer Selvidge, Tobias J. Kippenberg, John E. Bowers. 2021-03-03. Laser soliton microcombs on silicon. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abh2076

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