Microwave-to-optical conversion using lithium niobate thin-film acoustic resonators
By Linbo Shao, Mengjie Yu, Smarak Maity, N. Sinclair, Lu Zheng, Cleaven Chia, Amirhassan Shams-Ansari, Cheng Wang, Mian Zhang, K. Lai and 1 more. Optica, 2019
204 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Acoustic or mechanical resonators have emerged as a promising means to mediate efficient microwave-to-optical conversion. Here, we demonstrate conversion of microwaves up to 4.5 GHz in frequency to 1500 nm wavelength light using optomechanical interactions on suspended thin-film lithium niobate. Our method uses an interdigital transducer that drives a freestanding 100 μm-long thin-film acoustic resonator to modulate light traveling in a Mach–Zehnder interferometer or racetrack cavity. The strong microwave-to-acoustic coupling offered by the transducer in conjunction with the strong photoelastic, piezoelectric, and electro-optic effects of lithium niobate allows us to achieve a half-wave voltage of Vπ=4.6 V and Vπ=0.77 V for the Mach–Zehnder interferometer and racetrack resonator, respectively. The acousto-optic racetrack cavity exhibits an optomechanical single-photon coupling strength of 1.1 kHz. To highlight the versatility of our system, we also demonstrate a microwave photonic link with unitary gain, which refers to a 0 dB microwave power transmission over an optical channel. Our integrated nanophotonic platform, which leverages the compelling properties of lithium niobate, could help enable efficient conversion between microwave and optical fields.
Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5aca30c2e3ed70694afa9fc5d72a69cb9086ccf1
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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
Citations in the corpus
- Waveguide-Coupled Rydberg Spectrum Analyzer from 0 to 20 GHz (2020, background): “We must highlight that other physical platforms, such as electro-optics [26, 27], acousto-optics [28], optomechanics [29, 30], and other photonic platforms are making corresponding advances.”
- Advances in lithium niobate photonics: development status and perspectives (2022, methodology): “14 EO-based microwave to optical transducer in TFLN. (a) Microscopic image of a TFLNbased transducer, and (b) its corresponding measured maximum transduction efficiency with respect to optical pump powers.”