Nanowerk March 19, 2024 Current implementations of optical frequency division (OFD) require multiple lasers, with space- and energy-consuming optical stabilization and electronic feedback components, resulting in device footprints incompatible with integration into a compact and robust photonic platform. A team of researchers in the US (industry, Columbia University) demonstrated all-optical OFD on a photonic chip by synchronizing two distinct dynamical states of Kerr microresonators pumped by a single continuous-wave laser. The inherent stability of the terahertz beat frequency was transferred to a microwave frequency of a Kerr soliton comb, and synchronized via a coupling waveguide without the need for electronic […]
Category Archives: Photonic chip
Researchers develop world-leading microwave photonics chip for high-speed signal processing
Phys.org February 28, 2024 An ideal integrated microwave photonics (MWP) processing platform should have both an efficient and high-speed electro-optic modulation block to faithfully perform microwave–optic conversion at low power and a low-loss functional photonic network to implement various signal-processing tasks, and large-scale, low-cost manufacturability. An international team of researchers (Hong Kong, UK, China) demonstrated such an engine based on a 4-inch wafer-scale thin-film lithium niobate platform. It could perform multipurpose tasks with processing bandwidths of up to 67 GHz at CMOS-compatible voltages. They achieved ultrafast analogue computation. They demonstrated these functions to show three proof-of-concept applications: solving ordinary differential equations, […]
Tiny chip provides a big boost in precision optics
Phys.org November 12, 2021 Based on a theory of weak value amplification with waveguides, a team of researchers in the US (University of Rochester, industry, Chapman University) has packaged an experimental way of amplifying interferometric signals—without a corresponding increase in noise —on a 1 mm by 1 mm integrated photonic chip. Weak value amplification is based on the quantum mechanics of light, and basically involves directing only certain photons that contain the information needed, to a detector. They distilled all of this and put it into a photonic chip. The device removes that limitation of traditional interferometers by reaching the […]
Researchers create novel photonic chip
Phys.org February 2, 2021 Photonic Digital‐to‐analog converters (DAC) enable a seamless signal conversion with respect to both energy efficiency and short signal delay. Using a silicon photonic chip platform, a team of researchers (Washington University, UCLA) has developed a coherent parallel photonic DAC concept along with a 4‐bit prototype capable of performing as DAC without optic–electric–optic domain crossing. This guarantees a linear intensity weighting among bits when operating at high sampling rates (50 GHz), featuring an exceptional sampling efficiency (> 100 GS −1 ) and small footprint (≈1 mm2) in an 8‐bit implementation. The photonic DAC enables seamless interfaces of next‐generation data processing hardware […]
Photonics researchers report breakthrough in miniaturizing light-based chips
Nanowerk August 27, 2020 Researchers at the University of Rochester made an important step towards miniaturizing functional components on thin-film lithium niobate (LN) platform by developing high-speed LN electro-optic modulators, based upon photonic crystal nanobeam resonators. The devices exhibit a significant tuning efficiency, broad modulation bandwidth of 17.5 GHz, all with a tiny electro-optic modal volume. The modulators enable efficient electro-optic driving of high-Q photonic cavity modes in both adiabatic and non-adiabatic regimes and allow electro-optic switching at 11 Gb s−1 with a bit-switching energy as low as 22 fJ. The demonstration provides a crucial foundation for realizing large-scale LN […]
Photonic microwave generation using on-chip optical frequency combs
Science Daily April 20, 2020 Soliton microcombs can now be built using CMOS-compatible photonic integrated circuits. However, they operate with repetition rates significantly beyond those that conventional electronics can detect, preventing their use in microwave photonics. Researchers in Switzerland have demonstrated soliton microcombs operating in two widely employed microwave bands, the X-band (~10 GHz, for radar) and the K-band (~20 GHz, for 5G). Driven by a low noise fibre laser, these devices produce more than 300 frequency lines within the 3 dB bandwidth, and generate microwave signals with phase noise levels comparable to modern electronic microwave oscillators. The results establish integrated microcombs as […]
Programming light on a chip
Eurekalert January 8, 2019 An international team of researchers (USA – Harvard University, Howard University, China) has demonstrated a ‘photonic molecule’ with two distinct energy levels using coupled lithium niobate microring resonators and control it by external microwave excitation. They showed that the frequency and phase of light can be precisely controlled by programmed microwave signals and on-demand optical storage and retrieval by reconfiguring the photonic molecule into a bright–dark mode pair. These results open doors to applications in microwave signal processing, quantum photonic gates in the frequency domain and exploring concepts in optical computing and topological physics…read more. TECHNICAL […]