High-power and narrow-linewidth laser on thin-film lithium niobate enabled by photonic wire bonding
Thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) has emerged as a promising platform for the realization of high-performance chip-scale optical systems, spanning a range of applications from optical communications to microwave photonics. Such applications rely on the integration of multiple components onto a single platform. However, while many of these components have already been demonstrated on the TFLN platform, to date, a major bottleneck of the platform is the existence of a tunable, high-power, and narrow-linewidth on-chip laser. Here, we address this problem using photonic wire bonding to integrate optical amplifiers with a TFLN feedback circuit. We demonstrate an extended cavity diode laser with an excellent side mode suppression ratio exceeding 60 dB and a wide wavelength tunability over 43 nm. At higher currents, the laser produces a high maximum on-chip power of 76.2 mW while maintaining 51 dB side mode suppression. The laser frequency stability over short timescales shows an ultra-narrow intrinsic linewidth of 550 Hz. Long-term recordings indicate a high passive stability of the photonic wire bonded laser with 58 hours of mode-hop-free operation, with a trend in the frequency drift of only 4.4 MHz/h. This work verifies photonic wire bonding as a viable integration solution for high performance on-chip lasers, opening the path to system level upscaling and Watt-level output powers.
Authors
- Cornelis A. A. Franken (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1847-0812)
- Gage Hills (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4912-814X)
- Juergen Musolf
- Marko Lončar (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5029-5017)
- Keith Powell (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6327-1893)
- Rebecca Cheng (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-8954-9495)
- David R. Barton (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5409-8512)
- Klaus J. Boller (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6628-610X)
- Victoria Rosborough (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6163-9244)
- Georgios Kyriazidis
- Leif Johansson (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6379-0359)
- Maximilian Shah
Institutions
- Northwestern University (US)
- Harvard University (US)
- Williams College (US)
- Institute of Nanotechnology (GB)
- Freedom Photonics (United States) (US)
- University of Twente (NL)
Publication Details
- Journal
- APL Photonics
- Published
- 2025-02-01
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0231827
- Citations
- 21
- Primary Topic
- Photorefractive and Nonlinear Optics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 26.18
Funders
- National Science Foundation
- U.S. Department of Defense
- Harvard University
- Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
- Advanced Research Projects Agency
- Office of Naval Research
- Defense Sciences Office, DARPA