Sidewall-Poled Nanophotonic Lithium Niobate with Bidirectional Characterization

Abstract

Accurate characterization of integrated nonlinear photonic devices is often limited by unknown facet-coupling losses and fabrication-induced non-uniformities, leading to systematic over- or underestimation of the intrinsic on-chip performance. Here, we present and demonstrate a unified bidirectional characterization framework that exploits nonlinear interactions under forward and backward propagation to independently extract facet-specific coupling efficiencies, intrinsic nonlinear conversion efficiency, and the longitudinal quasi-phase-matching profile using only classical power measurements. We experimentally validate the method using sidewall-poled thin-film lithium niobate waveguides, obtaining a normalized second-harmonic generation efficiency of $(1850 \pm 20)~\%\mathrm{W}^{-1}$ while simultaneously demonstrating broadband non-degenerate optical parametric amplification and parametric generation spanning more than $10~\mathrm{THz}$. Our framework is non-destructive, relies solely on classical power measurements, requires neither time-intensive microscopy nor calibrated internal references, and is compatible with wafer-scale testing, providing a general route to rigorous benchmarking and high-throughput characterization of photonic devices across material platforms.