• Toward high-powered telecommunication sy

    From ScienceDaily@1:317/3 to All on Fri Apr 8 22:30:42 2022
    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! (1:317/3)