Self-mode-locking in a high-power hybrid silicon nitride integrated laser.

Integrated mode-locked lasers are useful tools in microwave photonic applications as a local oscillator. In particular, hybrid integrated lasers could easily be integrated with passive processing circuits. In this Letter, we report on the self-mode-locking of a hybrid integrated laser comprising two indium phosphide gain sections and a silicon nitride feedback circuit that filters light using two ring resonators. The hybrid laser is shown to mode-lock and to have a mostly frequency-modulated field in the cavity using a stepped-heterodyne optical complex spectrum analysis. A mostly frequency modulated field output is good for high powers per line due to a more continuous emission, compared with mode-locked lasers using a saturable absorber; additionally, the filter limits the bandwidth of the comb, condensing the power to the fewer comb lines.

28 GBd PAM-8 transmission over a 100 nm range using an InP-Si3N4 based integrated dual tunable laser module.

This paper describes the detailed characterization of a novel InP-Si3N4 dual laser module with results revealing relative intensity noise (RIN) as low as -165 dB/Hz and wide wavelength tunability (100 nm). The hybrid coupled laser is deployed in an unamplified 28 GBd 8 level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) short-reach data center (DC) transmission system. System performance, which is experimentally evaluated in terms of received signal bit error ratio (BER), demonstrates the ability of the proposed laser module to support PAM-8 transmission across a 100 nm tuning range with less than 1 dB variance in receiver sensitivity over the operating wavelength range. Comparative performance studies not only indicate that the proposed source can outperform a commercial external cavity laser (ECL) in an intensity modulation/direct detection (IM/DD) link but also highlight the critical impact of RIN in the design of advanced modulation short-reach systems.

Hybrid integrated InP-Si3N4 diode laser with a 40-Hz intrinsic linewidth.

We demonstrate a hybrid integrated and widely tunable diode laser with an intrinsic linewidth as narrow as 40 Hz, achieved with a single roundtrip through a low-loss feedback circuit that extends the cavity length to 0.5 meter on a chip. Employing solely dielectrics for single-roundtrip, single-mode resolved feedback filtering enables linewidth narrowing with increasing laser power, without limitations through nonlinear loss. We achieve single-frequency oscillation with up to 23 mW fiber coupled output power, 70-nm wide spectral coverage in the 1.55 µm wavelength range with 3 mW output and obtain more than 60 dB side mode suppression. Such properties and options for further linewidth narrowing render the approach of high interest for direct integration in photonic circuits serving microwave photonics, coherent communications, sensing and metrology with highest resolution.

8×8 reconfigurable quantum photonic processor based on silicon nitride waveguides.

The development of large-scale optical quantum information processing circuits ground on the stability and reconfigurability enabled by integrated photonics. We demonstrate a reconfigurable 8×8 integrated linear optical network based on silicon nitride waveguides for quantum information processing. Our processor implements a novel optical architecture enabling any arbitrary linear transformation and constitutes the largest programmable circuit reported so far on this platform. We validate a variety of photonic quantum information processing primitives, in the form of Hong-Ou-Mandel interference, bosonic coalescence/anti-coalescence and high-dimensional single-photon quantum gates. We achieve fidelities that clearly demonstrate the promising future for large-scale photonic quantum information processing using low-loss silicon nitride.

Photonic integrated circuit implementation of a sub-GHz-selectivity frequency comb filter for optical clock multiplication.

We report a photonic integrated circuit implementation of an optical clock multiplier, or equivalently an optical frequency comb filter. The circuit comprises a novel topology of a ring-resonator-assisted asymmetrical Mach-Zehnder interferometer in a Sagnac loop, providing a reconfigurable comb filter with sub-GHz selectivity and low complexity. A proof-of-concept device is fabricated in a high-index-contrast stoichiometric silicon nitride (Si3N4/SiO2) waveguide, featuring low loss, small size, and large bandwidth. In the experiment, we show a very narrow passband for filters of this kind, i.e. a -3-dB bandwidth of 0.6 GHz and a -20-dB passband of 1.2 GHz at a frequency interval of 12.5 GHz. As an application example, this particular filter shape enables successful demonstrations of five-fold repetition rate multiplication of optical clock signals, i.e. from 2.5 Gpulses/s to 12.5 Gpulses/s and from 10 Gpulses/s to 50 Gpulses/s. This work addresses comb spectrum processing on an integrated platform, pointing towards a device-compact solution for optical clock multipliers (frequency comb filters) which have diverse applications ranging from photonic-based RF spectrum scanners and photonic radars to GHz-granularity WDM switches and LIDARs.

Sub-GHz-resolution C-band Nyquist-filtering interleaver on a high-index-contrast photonic integrated circuit.

Modern optical communications rely on high-resolution, high-bandwidth filtering to maximize the data-carrying capacity of fiber-optic networks. Such filtering typically requires high-speed, power-hungry digital processes in the electrical domain. Passive optical filters currently provide high bandwidths with low power consumption, but at the expense of resolution. Here, we present a passive filter chip that functions as an optical Nyquist-filtering interleaver featuring sub-GHz resolution and a near-rectangular passband with 8% roll-off. This performance is highly promising for high-spectral-efficiency Nyquist wavelength division multiplexed (N-WDM) optical super-channels. The chip provides a simple two-ring-resonator-assisted Mach-Zehnder interferometer, which has a sub-cm2 footprint owing to the high-index-contrast Si3N4/SiO2 waveguide, while manifests low wavelength-dependency enabling C-band (> 4 THz) coverage with more than 160 effective free spectral ranges of 25 GHz. This device is anticipated to be a critical building block for spectrally-efficient, chip-scale transceivers and ROADMs for N-WDM super-channels in next-generation optical communication networks.

Integrated microwave photonic splitter with reconfigurable amplitude, phase, and delay offsets.

This work presents an integrated microwave photonics splitter with reconfigurable amplitude, phase, and delay offsets. The core components for this function are a dual-parallel Mach-Zehnder modulator, a deinterleaver, and tunable delay lines, all implemented using photonic integrated circuits. Using a demonstrator with an optical free spectral range of 25 GHz, we show experimentally the RF splitting function over two continuous bands, i.e., 0.9-11.6 GHz and 13.4-20 GHz. This result promises a deployable solution for creating wideband, reconfigurable RF splitters in integrated forms.

On-chip microwave photonic beamformer circuits operating with phase modulation and direct detection.

We propose and experimentally demonstrate the working principles of two novel microwave photonic (MWP) beamformer circuits operating with phase modulation (PM) and direct detection (DD). The proposed circuits incorporate two major signal processing functionalities, namely a broadband beamforming network employing ring resonator-based delay lines and an optical sideband manipulator that renders the circuit outputs equivalent to those of intensity-modulated MWP beamformers. These functionalities allow the system to employ low-circuit-complexity modulators and detectors, which brings significant benefits on the system construction cost and operation stability. The functionalities of the proposed MWP beamformer circuits were verified in experimental demonstrations performed on two sample circuits realized in Si(3)N(4)/SiO(2) waveguide technology. The measurements exhibit a 2 × 1 beamforming effect for an instantaneous RF transmission band of 3‒7 GHz, which is, to our best knowledge, the first verification of on-chip MWP beamformer circuits operating with PM and DD.

Silicon nitride microwave photonic circuits.

We present an overview of several microwave photonic processing functionalities based on combinations of Mach-Zehnder and ring resonator filters using the high index contrast silicon nitride (TriPleX™) waveguide technology. All functionalities are built using the same basic building blocks, namely straight waveguides, phase tuning elements and directional couplers. We recall previously shown measurements on high spurious free dynamic range microwave photonic (MWP) link, ultra-wideband pulse generation, instantaneous frequency measurements, Hilbert transformers, microwave polarization networks and demonstrate new measurements and functionalities on a 16 channel optical beamforming network and modulation format transformer as well as an outlook on future microwave photonic platform integration, which will lead to a significantly reduced footprint and thereby enables the path to commercially viable MWP systems.

System integration and radiation pattern measurements of a phased array antenna employing an integrated photonic beamformer for radio astronomy applications.

In this paper we describe the system integration and the experimental demonstration of a photonically beamformed four-element receiving array antenna for radio astronomy applications. To our knowledge, the work described here is the first demonstration of the squint-free, continuously tunable beamsteering capability offered by an integrated photonic beamformer based on optical ring resonator true-time-delay units, with measured radiation patterns. The integrated beamformer is realized in a low loss, complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) compatible optical waveguide technology. The measurements show a wideband, continuous beamsteering operation over a steering angle of 23.5 degrees and an instantaneous bandwidth of 500 MHz limited only by the measurement setup.