arXiv subjects

Ya Cheng

Publications and source records attributed to Ya Cheng.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2023

Thin Film Lithium Niobate Electro-optic Isolator Fabricated by photolithography assisted chemo-mechanical etching (PLACE)

We report a thin-film lithium niobate electro-optic isolator fabricated by photolithography-assisted chemo-mechanical etching in this work. The device demonstrates 39.50 dB isolation when subjected to a 24 GHz microwave of 25.5 dBm on its electrodes. The measured isolation remains consistently above 30 dB within the 1510 nm to 1600 nm wavelength range. The overall device insertion loss, specifically the fiber-to-fiber insert loss, has been measured to be 2.6 dB, which is attributed to our highly efficient spot size converter and the low propagation loss observed in the fabricated waveguides.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2023

Gigahertz-rate-switchable wavefront shaping through integration of metasurfaces with photonic integrated circuit

Achieving spatiotemporal control of light at high-speeds presents immense possibilities for various applications in communication, computation, metrology, and sensing. The integration of subwavelength metasurfaces and optical waveguides offers a promising approach to manipulate light across multiple degrees of freedom at high-speed in compact photonic integrated circuit (PICs) devices. Here, we demonstrate a gigahertz-rate-switchable wavefront shaping by integrating metasurface, lithium niobite on insulator (LNOI) photonic waveguide and electrodes within a PIC device. As proofs of concept, we showcase the generation of a focus beam with reconfigurable arbitrary polarizations, switchable focusing with lateral focal positions and focal length, orbital angular momentum light beams (OAMs) as well as Bessel beams. Our measurements indicate modulation speeds of up to gigahertz rate. This integrated platform offers a versatile and efficient means of controlling light field at high-speed within a compact system, paving the way for potential applications in optical communication, computation, sensing, and imaging.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2023

Erbium-ytterbium co-doped lithium niobate single-mode microdisk laser with an ultralow threshold of 1 uW

We demonstrate single-mode microdisk lasers in the telecom band with ultra-low thresholds on erbium-ytterbium co-doped thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN). The active microdisk were fabricated with high-Q factors by photo-lithography assisted chemo-mechanical etching. Thanks to the erbium-ytterbium co-doping providing high optical gain, the ultra-low loss nanostructuring, and the excitation of high-Q coherent polygon modes which suppresses multi-mode lasing and allows high spatial mode overlap factor between pump and lasing modes, single-mode laser emission operating at 1530 nm wavelength was observed with an ultra-low threshold, under 980-nm-band optical pump. The threshold was measured as low as 1 uW, which is one order of magnitude smaller than the best results previously reported in single-mode active TFLN microlasers. And the conversion efficiency reaches 0.406%, which is also the highest value reported in single-mode active TFLN microlasers.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2023

Efficient synthesis of Vitamin D3 in a 3D ultraviolet photochemical microreactor fabricated using an ultrafast laser

Large-scale, high-precision, and high-transparency microchannels hold great potential for developing high-performance continuous-flow photochemical reactions. We demonstrate ultrafast laser-enabled fabrication of 3D microchannel reactors in ultraviolet (UV) grade fused silica which exhibit high transparency under the illumination of UV light sources of wavelengths well below 300 nm with excellent mixing efficiency. With the fabricated glass microchannel reactors, we demonstrate continuous-flow UV photochemical synthesis of vitamin D3 with low power consumption of the UV light sources.

physics.app-ph↗

arXiv2023

Generation of Kerr soliton microcomb in a normally dispersed lithium niobate microdisk resonator by mode trimming

Anomalous microresonator dispersion is mandatory for Kerr soliton microcomb formation, which depends critically on the geometry of the microresonator and can hardly be tuned after the structure is made. To date, cavity-based microcombs have only been generated with fundamental whispering gallery modes (WGMs) of anomalous dispersion in microresonators. Moreover, microcomb generation in highly Raman-active platforms such as lithium niobate (LN) microresonators frequently suffers from stimulated Raman scattering and mode crossing due to the existence of multiple families of high-order WGMs. Here, we reveal a unique Kerr soliton microcomb generation mechanism through mode trimming in a weakly perturbed LN microdisk resonator. Remarkably, the soliton comb is generated with fundamental WGMs of normal dispersion and free from the mode crossing and Raman scattering effects. A robust soliton with a spectrum spanning from 1450 nm to 1620 nm at an on-chip pump power of 35 mW. Our discovery offers a powerful solution to circumvent the stringent requirements on high-precision dispersion engineering and termination of Raman excitation for soliton generation in the high-Q microdisk.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2023

On-chip coherent beam combination of waveguide amplifiers on Er$^{3+}$-doped thin film lithium niobate

We demonstrate on-chip coherent beam combination of two waveguide amplifiers on Er$^{3+}$-doped thin film lithium niobate (Er: TFLN) platform. Our device is built based on an electro-optic modulator fabricated on Er: TFLN. The output power of the coherently combined amplifiers is measured as high as 12.9 mW, surpassing that of previous single waveguide amplifiers based on Er$^{3+}$-doped thin film lithium niobate platform.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2023

Ultra-high Q lithium niobate microring monolithically fabricated by photolithography assisted chemo-mechanical etching

Thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) has been considered as one of the most important platforms for constructing high-performance photonic integrated devices such as electro-optic modulators, frequency combs, classical/quantum light sources, and large-scale photonic integrated circuits, benefiting from its excellent optical properties of TFLN. The fabrication quality of TFLN photonic integrated devices plays an important role in the performance and the integration scale of these devices. As one of the element photonic structures, the state-of-the-art TFLN microrings reach an intrinsic Q factor higher than 10^7 with ultra-smooth sidewalls, fabricated by photolithography assisted chemo-mechanical etching (PLACE). However, it is isolated on the chip surface and a tapered fiber is required to couple the light into and out of the resonator. Furthermore, it is difficult to maintain such high-Q factors when the microrings are monolithically integrated with bus waveguides by PLACE, resulted from large coupling loss with biggish coupling gap. Here, a relatively narrow gap of an ultra-high Q microring monolithically integrated with the bus-waveguide is achieved with 3.8 um by optimizing PLACE process, and a high temperature annealing is carried out to improve the loaded (intrinsic) Q factor with 4.29 X 10^6 (4.04 X 10^7), leading an ultra-low propagation loss of less than 1 dB/m, which is approximately 3 times better than the best values previously reported in ion-slicing TFLN platform.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2023

On-chip arrayed waveguide grating fabricated on thin film lithium niobate

We design an on-chip 8-channel TFLN AWG and fabricate the device using photolithography assisted chemo-mechanical etching (PLACE) technique. We experimentally measure the transmission of the fabricated TFLN AWG near the central wavelength of 1550 nm. We obtain an on-chip loss as low as 3.32 dB, a single-channel bandwidth of 1.6 nm and a total-channel bandwidth of 12.8 nm. The crosstalk between adjacent channels was measured to be below -7.01 dB within the wavelength range from 1543 nm to 1558 nm, and the crosstalk between non-adjacent channels was below -15 dB.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2023

Multi-mode Perturbation Modelling for Cavity Polygon and Star Modes

Polygon and star modes enable unidirectional emission and single-frequency lasing in whispering gallery microcavities. To understand their properties and facilitate design, we have adopted both two-dimensional and three-dimensional full-wave perturbation methods to simulate these modes. Our simulation demonstrates that a tapered optical fiber can be used as a weak perturbation to coherently combine multiple whispering gallery modes into a polygon or star mode. Additionally, our simulation predicts an optical quality factor as high as $10^7$ for the polygon modes, which is in good agreement with the experiment results.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2023

Real-time spectroscopic monitoring of continuous synthesis of zinc oxide nanostructures in femtosecond laser fabricated 3D microfluidic microchannels with integrated on-chip fiber probe array

Materials synthesis in a microfluidic environment enables the flexible and controllable production of various types of nanostructures which are of great potential in the fields of chemistry, environmental science, bioengineering, and medicine. Here, we demonstrate on-chip simultaneous continuous-flow synthesis and in-situ spectrum diagnosis of zinc oxide (ZnO) nanomaterials using a femtosecond-fabricated three-dimensional microchannel reactor integrated with an array of optical fiber probes. The microchannel reactor including 3D concentration gradient generators followed by 3D micromixing units provides high-efficiency manipulation of reactants with different concentrations as well as parallel reaction dynamics in an autonomous manner. The integrated optical fiber probe array allows precise and parallel spectropic detection in different microchannels with high spatial and temporal resolutions for screening the synthetic conditions. The synthesized ZnO nanostructures can be tailored in size, shape, and morphology by tuning the flow rates and reactant concentrations based on the spectroscopic signals detected with the fiber probe array.

physics.app-ph↗

arXiv2023

Electro-optically programmable photonic circuits enabled by wafer-scale integration on thin-film lithium niobate

Programmable photonic circuits performing universal linear-optical transformations underpin vital functions in photonic quantum information processing, quantum-enhanced sensor networks, machine learning and many other intriguing applications. Recent advances in photonic integrated circuits facilitate monolithic integration of externally controlled Mach-Zehnder interferometers which can implement arbitrary unitary transformation on a large number of input/output modes. In this work, we demonstrate a 4x4 programmable linear photonic circuit on lithium niobate on insulator platform employing fast, power-efficient and low-loss electro-optical phase shifters, showing enormous advantages in terms of configuration rate and power consumption. Our device is capable of fast switching with 500 ps rise time and 1.7 ns fall time, and possesses a total on-chip power dissipation of only 0.015 mW when operated at 1 MHz modulation, and an insertion loss of 0.15 dB for each modulator and an on-chip extinction ratio of -34 dB for both cross and bar routes.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2023

Ultra-high-speed high-resolution laser lithography for lithium niobate integrated photonics

Photolithography assisted chemo-mechanical etching (PLACE), a technique specifically developed for fabricating highquality large-scale photonic integrated circuits (PICs) on thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN), has enabled fabrication of a series of building blocks of PICs ranging from high-quality (high-Q) microresonators and low-loss waveguides to electrooptically (EO) tunable lasers and waveguide amplifiers. Aiming at high-throughput manufacturing of the PIC devices and systems, we have developed an ultra-high-speed high-resolution laser lithography fabrication system employing a high repetition rate femtosecond laser and a high-speed polygon laser scanner, by which a lithography fabrication efficiency of 4.8 cm2/h has been achieved at a spatial resolution of 200 nm. We demonstrate wafer-scale fabrication of TFLN-based photonic structures, optical phase masks as well as color printing

physics.optics↗

arXiv2022

On-chip single-mode thin film lithium niobate laser based on Sagnac loop reflectors

We demonstrate an on-chip single-mode Er3+-doped thin film lithium niobate (Er: TFLN) laser which consists of a Fabry-Pérot (FP) resonator based on Sagnac loop reflectors (SLRs). The fabricated Er: TFLN laser has a footprint of 6.5 mmx1.5 mm with a loaded quality (Q) factor of 1.6x105 and a free spectral range (FSR) of 63 pm. We generate the single-mode laser around 1550-nm wavelength with a maximum output power of 44.7 μW and a slope efficiency of 0.18 %.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2022

Monolithically integrated high-power narrow-bandwidth microdisk laser

Integrated on-chip microdisk lasers have attracted great attention as a light source of compact size, low lasing threshold and narrow bandwidth. However, challenges remain unresolved in terms of single mode operation at high output power while maintaining the ultra-narrow bandwidth. In this work, we demonstrate monolithically integrated on-chip single-frequency microdisk lasers coupled with bus-waveguides fabricated by photolithography assisted chemo-mechanical etching. Owing to the high-Q factor of a polygon whispering gallery mode formed in the microdisk and long cavity lengths (e.g., 409 um and 1 mm), a microdisk laser with a narrow linewidth of 0.11 MHz and a maximum output power of 62.1 uW has been achieved at room temperature.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2022

Modes trimming and clustering in a weakly perturbed high-Q whispering gallery microresonator

In general, a high-Q microresonator can accommodate abundant whispering gallery modes (WGMs) with the mode number increasing with the dimensional sizes of the microresonator. Removing the unnecessary modes while reorganizing the remaining modes is of vital importance, which, however, has been proved challenging and usually results in a tradeoff with the Q of the microresonator. Here, we reveal an effective and controllable mode trimming and clustering mechanism underlying the generation of polygon and star modes in weakly perturbed tapered fiber-coupled lithium niobate whispering gallery microresonators. Experimentally, various polygon and star modes are observed in sequence within a single microresonator by tuning the excitation wavelength or varying the coupling position between a tapered fiber and the circular microresonator, which can be well reproduced with our theoretical model. The finding offers a ubiquitous solution for a broad range of applications requiring elaborate selection and organization of the high-Q WGMs.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2022

Electro-optically tunable low phase-noise microwave synthesizer in an active lithium niobate microdisk

Photonic-based low-phase-noise microwave generation with real-time frequency tuning is crucial for a broad spectrum of subjects, including next-generation wireless communications, radar, metrology, and modern instrumentation. Here, for the first time to the best of our knowledge, narrow-bandwidth dual-wavelength microlasers are generated from nearly degenerate polygon modes in a high-Q active lithium niobate microdisk. The high-Q polygon modes formation with independently controllable resonant wavelengths and free spectral ranges is enabled by the weak perturbation of the whispering gallery microdisk resonators using a tapered fiber. The stable beating signal confirms the low phase-noise achieved in the tunable laser. Owing to the high spatial overlap factors between the two nearly degenerate lasing modes as well as that between the two lasing modes and the pump mode, gain competition between the two modes is suppressed, leading to stable dual-wavelength laser generation and in turn the low noise microwave source. The measured microwave signal shows a linewidth of ~6.87 kHz, a phase noise of ~-123 dBc/Hz, and an electro-optic tuning efficiency of -1.66 MHz/V.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2022

Monolithically integrated active passive waveguide array fabricated on thin film lithium niobate using a single continuous photolithography process

We demonstrate a robust low-loss optical interface by tiling passive (i.e., without doping of active ions) thin film lithium niobate (TFLN) and active (i.e., doped with rare earth ions) TFLN substrates for monolithic integration of passive/active lithium niobate photonics. The tiled substrates composed of both active and passive areas allow to pattern the mask of the integrated active passive photonic device at once using a single continuous photolithography process. The interface loss of tiled substrate is measured as low as 0.26 dB. Thanks to the stability provided by this approach, a four-channel waveguide amplifier is realized in a straightforward manner, which shows a net gain of ~5 dB at 1550-nm wavelength and that of ~8 dB at 1530-nm wavelength for each channel. The robust low-loss optical interface for passive/active photonic integration will facilitate large-scale high performance photonic devices which require on-chip light sources and amplifiers.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2022

Electrically driven compact hybrid lithium niobate microring laser

We demonstrate an electrically driven compact hybrid lithium niobate microring laser by butt coupling a commercial 980-nm pump laser diode chip with a high quality Er3+-doped lithium niobate microring chip. Single mode lasing emission at 1531 nm wavelength from the Er3+-doped lithium niobate microring can be observed with the integrated 980-nm laser pumping. The compact hybrid lithium niobate microring laser occupies the chip size of 3 mmx4mmx0.5 mm. The threshold pumping laser power is 6 mW and the threshold current is 0.5 A (operating voltage 1.64 V) in the atmospheric temperature. The spectrum featuring single mode lasing with small linewidth of 0.05 nm is observed. This work explores a robust hybrid lithium niobate microring laser source which has potential applications in coherent optical communication and precision metrology.

physics.optics↗