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In this introduction, we provide an overview of the papers that were accepted for publication in the JOSA B feature issue on integrated lithium niobate photonics. A total of 13 papers, comprising two review articles and 11 research articles, are included. This feature issue presents cutting-edge research on integrated lithium niobate photonics and highlights recent developments in its applications in photonic and optoelectronic integration.

The commercial success of radio-frequency acoustic filters in wireless communication systems has launched aluminum nitride (AlN) as one of the most widely used semiconductors across the globe. Over recent years, AlN has also been investigated as an attractive photonic integrated platform due to its excellent characteristics, such as enormous bandgaps (∼6.2 eV), quadratic and cubic optical nonlinearities, Pockels electro-optic effects, and compatibility with the complementary metal-oxide semiconductor technology. In parallel, AlN possesses outstanding piezoelectric and mechanical performances, which can provide new aspects for controlling phonons and photons at the wavelength scale using nanophotonic architectures. These characteristics pose AlN as a promising candidate to address the drawbacks in conventional silicon and silicon nitride platforms. In this review, we aim to present recent advances achieved in AlN photonic integrated circuits ranging from material processing and passive optical routing to active functionality implementation such as electro-optics, piezo-optomechanics, and all-optical nonlinear frequency conversion. Finally, we highlight the challenges and future prospects existing in AlN nanophotonic chips.

Towards homogeneous group-III-Nitride integration, an aluminum nitride (AlN) photonic circuit is developed to create narrow-linewidth emission in gallium nitride (GaN) laser diodes. Single-mode emission at blue-to-green wavelengths is demonstrated with a linewidth of 1 MHz.

We demonstrate a photonic circuit integrated Ti:Sa laser with a threshold of 6.8 mW, 0.4 mW output power from 730 nm to 850 nm, and a linewidth less than 120 kHz.

We demonstrate an efficient optical parametric oscillator at the telecom band using a triple-resonant, periodically poled lithium niobate microring resonator, which, to the best of our knowledge, delivers the lowest threshold power (∼30 µW) for on-chip OPOs so far.

We demonstrate an efficient, bi-directional electro-optic frequency converter based on a hybrid lithium-niobate/superconductor material platform. Through materials and device engineering to mitigate the limiting photorefractive effect, on-chip conversion effi-ciency of 1% is realized.

Photons at microwave and optical frequencies are principal carriers for quantum information. While microwave photons can be effectively controlled at the local circuit level, optical photons can propagate over long distances. High-fidelity conversion between microwave and optical photons will allow the distribution of quantum states across different quantum technology nodes and enhance the scalability of hybrid quantum systems toward a future “Quantum Internet.” Despite a frequency difference of five orders of magnitude, there has been significant progress recently toward the transfer between microwave and optical photons with steadily improved efficiency in a coherent and bidirectional manner. In this review, we summarize this progress, emphasizing integrated device approaches, and provide a perspective for device implementation that enables quantum state transfer and entanglement distribution across microwave and optical domains.

This erratum corrects a typographic error that appears in Table 1 of our earlier paper [Optica 8, 539 (2021)OPTIC82334-253610.1364/OPTICA.418984].

Rare earth ions are known as promising candidates for building quantum light-matter interface. However, tunable photonic cavity access to rare earth ions in their desired host crystal remains challenging. Here, we demonstrate the integration of erbium doped yttrium orthosilicate (Er3+:Y2SiO5) with thin-film lithium niobate photonic circuit by plasma-activated direct flip chip bonding. Resonant coupling to erbium ions is realized by on-chip electro-optically tuned high Q lithium niobate micro-ring resonators. Fluorescence and absorption of erbium ions at 1536.48 nm are measured in the waveguides, while the collective ion-cavity cooperativity with micro-ring resonators is assessed to be 0.36. This work presents a versatile scheme for future rare earth ion integrated quantum devices.

Thin-film lithium niobate is an attractive integrated photonics platform due to its low optical loss and favorable optical nonlinear and electro-optic properties. However, in applications such as second harmonic generation, frequency comb generation, and microwave-to-optics conversion, the device performance is strongly impeded by the photorefractive effect inherent in thin-film lithium niobate. In this paper, we show that the dielectric cladding on a lithium niobate microring resonator has a significant influence on the photorefractive effect. By removing the dielectric cladding layer, the photorefractive effect in lithium niobate ring resonators can be effectively mitigated. Our work presents a reliable approach to control the photorefractive effect on thin-film lithium niobate and will further advance the performance of integrated classical and quantum photonic devices based on thin-film lithium niobate.

The absence of the single-photon nonlinearity has been a major roadblock in developing quantum photonic circuits at optical frequencies. In this paper, we demonstrate a periodically poled thin film lithium niobate microring resonator (PPLNMR) that reaches 5,000,000%/W second-harmonic conversion efficiency—almost 20-fold enhancement over the state-of-the-art—by accessing its largest χ ( 2 ) tensor component d 33 via quasi-phase matching. The corresponding single-photon coupling rate g / 2 π is estimated to be 1.2 MHz, which is an important milestone as it approaches the dissipation rate κ / 2 π of best-available lithium niobate microresonators developed in the community. Using a figure of merit defined as g / κ , our device reaches a single-photon nonlinear anharmonicity approaching 1%. We show that, by further scaling of the device, it is possible to improve the single-photon anharmonicity to a regime where photon blockade effect can be manifested.

Cavity optomagnonics has emerged as a promising platform for studying coherent photon-spin interactions as well as tunable microwave-to-optical conversion. However, current implementation of cavity optomagnonics in ferrimagnetic crystals remains orders of magnitude larger in volume than state-of-the-art cavity optomechanical devices, resulting in very limited magneto-optical interaction strength. Here, we demonstrate a cavity optomagnonic device based on integrated waveguides and its application for microwave-to-optical conversion. By designing a ferrimagnetic rib waveguide to support multiple magnon modes with maximal mode overlap to the optical field, we realize a high magneto-optical cooperativity, which is three orders of magnitude higher compared to previous records of the magneto-optical cooperativity obtained on polished yttrium iron garnet spheres. Furthermore, we achieve tunable conversion of microwave photons at around 8.45 GHz to 1550 nm light with a broad conversion bandwidth as large as 16.1 MHz. The unique features of the system point to novel applications at the crossroad between quantum optics and magnonics.

Thin film lithium niobate (LN) is bringing renewed potential to the realm of integrated photonics. Its strong quadratic and cubic nonlinearities as well as wide transparency window are ideal for realizing on-chip self-referenced soliton microcombs. However, broadband Kerr cavity soliton generation in LN thin films remains challenging due to limited dispersion control and competition from strong stimulated Raman scattering (SRS). Here, we demonstrate the generation of soliton microcombs in LN thin films featuring broad spectral spans up to 4/5 octaves with the emission of dual dispersion waves (2/3 octaves apart) and sub-terahertz repetition rates (down to 335 GHz) by suppressing strong SRS. Numerical simulations based on coupled-mode equations that incorporate Raman effects further elucidate the soliton dynamics in this highly Raman-active material system.

Despite very efficient superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) reported recently, combining their other performance advantages such as high speed and ultralow timing jitter in a single device still remains challenging. In this work, we present a perfect absorber model and the corresponding detector design based on a micrometer-long NbN nanowire integrated with a 2D photonic crystal cavity of ultrasmall mode volume, which promises simultaneous achievement of near-unity absorption, gigahertz counting rates, and broadband optical response with a 3 dB bandwidth of 71 nm. Compared to previous stand-alone meandered and waveguide-integrated SNSPDs, this perfect absorber design addresses the trade space in size, efficiency, speed, and bandwidth for realizing large on-chip single-photon detector arrays.

Nonlinear optical effects in integrated microcavities have been studied extensively with the advantages of strong light-matter interaction, great scalability, and stability due to the small mode volume. However, the pump lasers stimulating nonlinear effects impose obstacles for practical applications, since the material absorption causes thermal resonance drift and instability. Here we experimentally demonstrate an all-optical control of the thermal behavior in optical microcavities for tunable doubly-resonant second-harmonic (SH) generation on an integrated photonic chip. Through an auxiliary control laser, the temperature of a selected microring can be efficiently changed, thus allowing precise frequency tuning of the doubly-resonant wavelength while eliminating the distortion of the lineshape induced by the thermo-optic effect. Although the phase-matching conditions will limit the tuning range of 55GHz, the technique is still potential to achieve a larger tuning range in combination with temperature regulation. Additionally, this approach has the advantage of quick reconfiguration, showing a fast modulation rate up to about 256 kHz. The theoretical model behind our experimental scheme is universal and applicable to other microcavity-enhanced nonlinear optical processes, and our work paves the way for controlling and utilizing the thermal effect in the applications of microcavities.

Here, we report χ ( 3 ) -based optical parametric oscillation (OPO) with widely separated signal–idler frequencies from crystalline aluminum nitride microrings pumped at 2 µ m . By tailoring the width of the microring, OPO reaching toward the telecom and mid-infrared bands with a frequency separation of 64.2 THz is achieved. While dispersion engineering through changing the microring width is capable of shifting the OPO sideband by > 9 T H z , the OPO frequency can also be agilely tuned in the ranges of 1 and 0.1 THz, respectively, by shifting the pump wavelength and controlling the chip’s temperature. At high pump powers, the OPO sidebands further evolve into localized frequency comb lines. Such large-frequency-shift OPO with flexible wavelength tunability will lead to enhanced chip-scale light sources.

Superconducting nanowire single photon detectors are typically biased using a constant current source and shunted in a conductance which is over an order of magnitude larger than the peak normal domain conductance of the detector. While this design choice is required to ensure quenching of the normal domain, the use of a small load resistor limits the pulse amplitude, rising-edge slew rate, and recovery time of the detector. Here, we explore the possibility of actively quenching the normal domain, thereby removing the need to shunt the detector in a small resistance. We first consider the theoretical performance of an actively quenched superconducting nanowire single photon detector and, in comparison to a passively quenched device, we predict roughly an order of magnitude improvement in the slew rate and peak voltage achieved in this configuration. The experimental performance of actively and passively quenched superconducting nanowire single photon detectors are then compared. It is shown that, in comparison to a passively quenched device, the actively quenched detectors simultaneously exhibited improved count rates, dark count rates, and timing jitter., 15 pages, 9 figures