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Microresonators coupled with integrated waveguides operate stably but usually lack tunability for an optimal coupling state. In this Letter, we demonstrate a racetrack resonator with an electrically modulated coupling on an X-cut lithium niobate (LN) platform by introducing a Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI) with two balanced directional couplers (DCs) to realize light exchange. This device provides a wide-range coupling regulation, from under-coupling and critical coupling to deep over-coupling. Importantly, it has a fixed resonance frequency when the DC splitting ratio is 3 dB. The measured optical responses of the resonator exhibit a high extinction ratio, exceeding 23 dB, and an effective half-wave voltage length Vπ·L of 0.77 V·cm, suitable for CMOS compatibility. Microresonators with tunable coupling and a stable resonance frequency are expected to find application in nonlinear optical devices on LN-integrated optical platforms.

Lithium niobate (LN) thin film has recently emerged as an important platform for nonlinear optical investigations for its large $\chi^{(2)}$ nonlinear coefficients and ability of light localization. In this paper, we report the first fabrication of LN on insulator (LNOI) ridge waveguides with generalized quasi-periodic poled superlattices using the electric field polarization technique and microfabrication techniques. Benefiting from the abundant reciprocal vectors, we observed efficient second-harmonic and cascaded third-harmonic signals in the same device, with the normalized conversion efficiency 1735% W$^{-1}$cm$^{-2}$ and 0.41% W$^{-2}$cm$^{-4}$, respectively. This work opens a new direction of nonlinear integrated photonics based on LN thin film., Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures

Integrated optical systems based on lithium niobate on insulator (LNOI) have shown great potential in recent years. However, the LNOI platform is facing a shortage of active devices. Considering the significant progress made in rare-earth-doped LNOI lasers and amplifiers, the fabrication of on-chip ytterbium-doped LNOI waveguide amplifiers based on electron-beam lithography and inductively coupled plasma reactive ion etching was investigated. The signal amplification at lower pump power (

Integrated and stable microlasers are indispensable building blocks of micro-photonics. Here, we report the realization of an ytterbium-doped lithium niobate microring laser operating in the 1060-nm band under the pump of a 980-nm-band laser. The monolithic laser has a low threshold of 59.32 µW and relatively high output power of 6.44 µW, a state-of-the-art value for rare-earth ions-doped lithium niobate thin-film lasers. The monolithic laser with desirable performance and attractive scalability may find many applications in lithium niobite photonics.

Integrated optical systems based on lithium niobate on insulator (LNOI) have attracted the interest of researchers. Recently, erbium-doped LNOI lasers have been realized. However, the reported lasers have a relatively lower conversion efficiency and only operate in the 1550 nm band. In this paper, we demonstrate an LNOI laser operating in the 1060 nm band based on a high Q factor ytterbium-doped LNOI microdisk cavity. The threshold and the conversion efficiency of the laser are 21.19 µW and 1.36%, respectively. To our knowledge, the conversion efficiency is the highest among the reported rare-earth-doped LNOI lasers. This research extends the operating band of LNOI lasers and shows the potential in realizing high-power LNOI lasers.

Lithium niobate on insulator (LNOI), regarded as an important candidate platform for optical integration due to its excellent nonlinear, electro-optic and other physical properties, has become a research hotspot. Light source, as an essential component for integrated optical system, is urgently needed. In this paper, we reported the realization of 1550-nm band on-chip LNOI microlasers based on erbium-doped LNOI ring cavities with loaded quality factors higher than one million, which were fabricated by using electron beam lithography and inductively coupled plasma reactive ion etching processes. These microlasers demonstrated a low pump threshold of ~20 {\mu}W and stable performance under the pump of a 980-nm band continuous laser. Comb-like laser spectra spanning from 1510 nm to 1580 nm were observed in high pump power regime, which lays the foundation of the realization of pulsed laser and frequency combs on rare-earth ion doped LNOI platform. This work has effectively promoted the development of on-chip integrated active LNOI devices., Comment: 4 pages,4 figures

High-efficiency chirped grating couplers (GCs) with coupling efficiencies (CE) approaching 90%/coupler were designed by using a particle swarm optimization algorithm. These GCs were fabricated on -cut lithium niobate on insulator (LNOI) with an Au layer on the lithium niobate substrate. The maximum CEs for transverse electric and transverse magnetic polarization input were measured up to /coupler and /coupler, respectively, which are the state-of-the-art values for LNOI GCs as far as we know. These GCs contribute to the realization of high-efficiency LNOI on-chip integrated optics.

Periodically poled lithium niobate (PPLN) structures on a chip enable efficient second-order nonlinear optical effects, benefiting from the tight light confinement and the utilization of d33. Here, we report a broadband second-harmonic (SH) generation in a step-chirped PPLN waveguide on X-cut lithium niobate on insulator (LNOI). The high fidelity of the poling period is demonstrated over the whole length of 7 mm using a non-destructive technique of piezoresponse force microscopy. The SH signal was continuously observed in the step-chirped PPLN waveguides while scanning the wavelength of the pump laser from 1550 nm to 1660 nm. The SH conversion efficiency was measured to be 9.6 % W-1 cm-2 at 1642 nm. This work will benefit wavelength conversions of light sources with wideband spectra.

Periodically poled lithium niobate (PPLN) microcavities with additional reciprocal vectors attract attention as a platform for efficient parametric nonlinear optical processes with wavelength and polarization flexibility. Here, we report the simultaneous realization of multiple coupled parametric processes in PPLN microdisk cavities with dual periods as a result of the significantly increased number of reciprocal vectors to fulfill quasi-phase matchings for a series of nonlinear processes. PPLN microdisks with up to 1.43 × 10 5 quality factors and unit domain size of 90 nm in width were fabricated using CMOS compatible microfabrication techniques and electrically poled with the help of piezoresponse force microscopy. The conversion efficiency of second-harmonic signal was measured to be 51 % W − 1 . Our work paves the way towards efficient cascaded parametric effects including third- and fourth-harmonic generations.

We report a method to generate angularly polarized vector beams with a topological charge of one by rotating air holes to form two-dimensional photonic crystal (PC) cavities. The mode volume and resonance wavelength of these cavities are tuned from 0.33 ( λ / n ) 3 to 12 ( λ / n ) 3 and in a wide range of 400 nm, respectively, by controlling the range of fixed air holes near the center of the structure. As a benefit, the half-maximum divergence angles of the vector beam can be widely changed from 90° to ∼ 60 ∘ . By adjusting the shift direction of the air holes in the PC cavities, optical vector beams with different far-field morphology are obtained. The scheme provides not only an alternative method to generate optical vector beams, but also an effective strategy to control far-field morphology and polarizations, which holds promising applications such as optical microscopy and micro-manipulation.

Lithium niobate (LN) is the workhorse for modern optoelectronics industry and nonlinear optics. High quality (Q) factor LN microresonators are promising candidates for applications in optical communications, quantum photonics, and sensing. However, the phase-matching requirement of traditional evanescent coupling methods poses significant challenges to achieve high coupling efficiencies of the pump and signal light simultaneously, ultimately limiting the practical usefulness of these high Q factor LN resonators. Here, for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, we demonstrate deformed chaotic LN microcavities that feature directional emission patterns and high Q factors simultaneously. The chaotic LN microdisks are created using conventional semiconductor fabrication processes, with measured Q factors exceeding 106 in the telecommunication band. We show that our devices can be free-space-coupled with high efficiency by leveraging directional emission from the asymmetric cavity. Using this broadband approach, we demonstrate a 58-fold enhancement of free-space collection efficiency of a second harmonic generation signal, compared with a circular microdisk.

Based on the conversion between the fundamental mode (LP01) and the higher-order mode (LP11) in a tapered fiber via a whispering gallery mode resonator, an add/drop filter was proposed and demonstrated experimentally, in which the resonator only interacted with one tapered fiber, rather than two tapered fibers as in conventional configurations. The filter gains advantages of easy alignment and low scattering loss over the other filters based on tapered fiber and resonator, and will be useful in application.

We report a tunable add/drop channel coupler based on an acousto-optic tunable filter and a tapered fiber. The coupling efficiency and central wavelength of the add/drop channel coupler are tunable by simply tuning the power and frequency of the driving radio frequency signal. Further possible improvements on the configuration are also discussed.

We report a type of all-fiber acousto-optic tunable notch filter consisting of a cuneal acoustic transducer and a fiber winding of four unjacketed single-mode fibers. With -32 dB peak rejection efficiency and 178 nm tunable range of the central wavelength, all of the tunable characteristics of the all-fiber acousto-optic tunable filter are kept. In addition, the structure is versatile and convenient for use in building other complicated filters. As an example, a coarse comblike filter has been built by adjusting the axial strains of the unjacketed fibers.