Octave-spanning tunable infrared parametric oscillators in nanophotonics
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1.
California Institute of Technology
Abstract
Widely tunable coherent sources are desirable in nanophotonics for a multitude of applications ranging from communications to sensing. The mid-infrared spectral region (wavelengths beyond 2 μm) is particularly important for applications relying on molecular spectroscopy. Among tunable sources, optical parametric oscillators typically offer some of the broadest tuning ranges; however, their implementations in nanophotonics have been limited to narrow tuning ranges in the infrared or to visible wavelengths. Here, we surpass these limits in dispersion-engineered periodically poled lithium niobate nanophotonics and demonstrate ultrawidely tunable optical parametric oscillators. Using 100 ns pulses near 1 μm, we generate output wavelengths tunable from 1.53 μm to 3.25 μm in a single chip with output powers as high as tens of milliwatts. Our results represent the first octave-spanning tunable source in nanophotonics extending into the mid-infrared, which can be useful for numerous integrated photonic applications.
Copyright and License
© 2023 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY).
Acknowledgement
The device nanofabrication was performed at the Kavli Nanoscience Institute (KNI) at Caltech. Part of this research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with NASA. We thank NTT Research for their financial and technical support.
Funding
The authors gratefully acknowledge support from Army Research Office grant no. W911NF-23-1-0048 (A.M.), National Science Foundation grant no. 1846273 (A.M.), National Science Foundation grant no. 1918549 (A.M.), and Air Force Office of Scientific Research award FA9550-20-1-0040 (A.M.). This work was supported by a NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunities Award.
Contributions
Conceptualization: A.M. and L.L. Methodology: L.L. designed the devices. L.L. fabricated the chip with assistance from R.S. and Q.G. L.L. characterized the devices with assistance from A.R., L.C., R.G., R.N., and R.M.B. Supervision: A.M. Writing—original draft: L.L. Writing—review and editing: A.M., L.L., and A.R.
Data Availability
All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper and/or the Supplementary Materials.
Conflict of Interest
L.L., R.M.B., and A.M. are inventors on granted U.S. patent 11,226,538 held by California Institute of Technology and filed on 7 March 2019 that covers thin-film optical parametric oscillators. L.L., A.M., A.R., R.S., and R.G. are inventors on a U.S. provisional patent application filed by the California Institute of Technology (application number 63/466,188) on 12 May 2023. L.L., A.M., and R.G. are inventors on a U.S. provisional patent application filed by the California Institute of Technology (application number 63/434,015) on 20 December 2022. L.L. and A.M. are involved in developing photonic integrated nonlinear circuits at PINC Technologies Inc. L.L. and A.M. have an equity interest in PINC Technologies Inc. The other authors declare that they have no competing interests.
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Additional details
- PMCID
- PMC10371009
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- United States Army Research Office
- W911NF-23-1-0048
- National Science Foundation
- ECCS-1846273
- National Science Foundation
- CCF-1918549
- United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- FA9550-20-1-0040
- Accepted
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2023-07-28published print
- Caltech groups
- Kavli Nanoscience Institute