Integrated Photonics in Thin-Film Lithium Niobate

Lithium niobate ($\mathbf{L N}$), an outstanding and versatile material, has influenced our daily life for decades: from enabling high-speed optical communications that form the backbone of the Internet to realizing radio-frequency filtering used in our cell phones. This half-century-old material is currently embracing a revolution in thin-film $\mathbf{L N}$ integrated photonics. The success of manufacturing wafer-scale, high-quality, thin films of LN on insulator, accompanied with breakthroughs in nanofabrication techniques, have made high-performance integrated nanophotonic components possible. With rapid development in the past few years, some of these thin-film LN (TFLN) devices [1], such as optical modulators and nonlinear wavelength converters, have already outperformed their legacy counterparts realized in bulk LN crystals. Furthermore, the nanophotonic integration enabled ultra-low-loss resonators in LN, which unlocked many novel applications such as optical frequency combs and quantum transducers. In this presentation, I will provide an introduction into the field of TFLN with a focus on high-performance electro optical modulators with applications in Telecom, Datacom, test and more.