Toward high-powered telecommunication systems

Date:
April 8, 2022
Source:
Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Summary:
Researchers have developed a fully integrated high-power laser
on a lithium niobate chip, paving the way for high-powered
telecommunication systems, fully integrated spectrometers, optical
remote sensing, and efficient frequency conversion for quantum
networks, among other applications.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
For all the recent advances in integrated lithium niobate photonic
circuits - - from frequency combs to frequency converters and modulators
-- one big component has remained frustratingly difficult to integrate:
lasers.


==========================================================================
Long haul telecommunication networks, data center optical interconnects,
and microwave photonic systems all rely on lasers to generate an optical carrier used in data transmission. In most cases, lasers are stand-alone devices, external to the modulators, making the whole system more
expensive and less stable and scalable.

Now, researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering
and Applied Sciences (SEAS) in collaboration with industry partners at
Freedom Photonics and HyperLight Corporation, have developed the first
fully integrated high-power laser on a lithium niobate chip, paving
the way for high-powered telecommunication systems, fully integrated spectrometers, optical remote sensing, and efficient frequency conversion
for quantum networks, among other applications.

"Integrated lithium niobate photonics is a promising platform for the development of high-performance chip-scale optical systems, but getting
a laser onto a lithium niobate chip has proved to be one of the biggest
design challenges," said Marko Loncar, the Tiantsai Lin Professor of
Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics at SEAS and senior author of
the study. "In this research, we used all the nano-fabrication tricks
and techniques learned from previous developments in integrated lithium
niobate photonics to overcome those challenges and achieve the goal of integrating a high-powered laser on a thin-film lithium niobate platform."
The research is published in the journal Optica.

Loncar and his team used small but powerful distributed feedback lasers
for their integrated chip. On chip, the lasers sit in small wells or
trenches etched into the lithium niobate and deliver up to 60 milliwatts
of optical power in the waveguides fabricated in the same platform. The researchers combined the laser with a 50 gigahertz electro-optic modulator
in lithium niobate to build a high-power transmitter.

"Integrating high-performance plug-and-play lasers would significantly
reduce the cost, complexity, and power consumption of future communication systems," said Amirhassan Shams-Ansari, a graduate student at SEAS and
first author of the study. "It's a building block that can be integrated
into larger optical systems for a range of applications, in sensing,
lidar, and data telecommunications." By combining thin-film lithium
niobate devices with high-power lasers using an industry-friendly process,
this research represents a key step towards large- scale, low-cost,
and high-performance transmitter arrays and optical networks.

Next, the team aims to increase the laser's power and scalability for
even more applications.

Harvard's Office of Technology Development has protected the intellectual property arising from the Loncar Lab's innovations in lithium niobate
systems.

Loncar is a cofounder of HyperLight Corporation, a startup which was
launched to commercialize integrated photonic chips based on certain innovations developed in his lab.

The research was co-authored by Dylan Renaud, Rebecca Cheng, Linbo Shao,
Di Zhu, and Mengjie Yu, from SEAS, Hannah R. Grant, Leif Johansson
from Freedom Photonics and Lingyan He and Mian Zhang from HyperLight Corporation. It was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency under grant HR0011- 20-C-0137 and the Air Force Office of
Scientific Research under grant FA9550- 19-1-0376.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Harvard_John_A._Paulson_School_of_Engineering_and_Applied
Sciences. Original written by Leah Burrows. Note: Content may be edited
for style and length.


========================================================================== Related Multimedia:
*
The_on-chip_laser_is_combined_with_a_50_gigahertz_electro-optic_modulator
in_lithium_niobate_to_build_a_high-power_transmitter.

========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Amirhassan Shams-Ansari, Dylan Renaud, Rebecca Cheng, Linbo Shao,
Lingyan
He, Di Zhu, Mengjie Yu, Hannah R. Grant, Leif Johansson, Mian
Zhang, Marko Lončar. Electrically pumped laser transmitter
integrated on thin-film lithium niobate. Optica, 2022; 9 (4):
408 DOI: 10.1364/ OPTICA.448617 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/04/220408113955.htm

--- up 5 weeks, 4 days, 10 hours, 50 minutes
* Origin: -=> Castle Rock BBS <=- Now Husky HPT Powered! (1337:3/111)