Barium titanate poling dynamics in high-speed communications

High-speed optical links will be essential to match the ever-growing demands of data centers driven by artificial intelligence. Barium titanate (BTO) has emerged as a promising and novel technology for high-speed optical modulators due to its excellent electro-optic (EO) properties and compatibility with the standard silicon photonics process. We demonstrate the, to our knowledge, first dual-polarization in-phase quadrature modulator on the BTO platform with record data rates of 1.15 Tbps over an 80 km link. Achieving such performance requires active poling of BTO under an applied bias to fully realize its EO potential. We present an analysis of the poling bias impact on the device Pockels coefficient and assess the resulting performance in a high-speed optical transmission system. Various poling procedures are investigated, and the influence of ferroelectric hysteresis on device and system performance is studied. Our findings are broadly applicable to other BTO applications, with relevance to quantum computing, neuromorphic computing, microwave photonics, and optical switching. This demonstration and study highlight BTO as a promising modulator technology for next-generation optical transmission systems and other emerging photonic technologies.