Highly-tunable efficient second-harmonic generation in a lithium niobate nanophotonic waveguide

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a lithium niobate nanophotonic waveguide capable of highly-tunable second-harmonic generation with high efficiency, leveraging thermo-optic birefringence for flexible wavelength control in a compact device.

Contribution

It introduces a novel on-chip SHG device that combines large wavelength tunability with high conversion efficiency using lithium niobate's thermo-optic properties.

Findings

Spectral tuning slope of 0.84 nm/K for telecom-band pump

Nonlinear conversion efficiency of 4.7% W$^{-1}$

Device length of only 8 mm

Abstract

Highly-tunable coherent light generation is crucial for many important photonic applications. Second-harmonic generation (SHG) is a dominant approach for this purpose, which, however, exhibits a trade-off between the conversion efficiency and the wavelength tunability in a conventional nonlinear platform. Recent development of the integrated lithium niobate (LN) technology makes it possible to achieve a large wavelength tuning while maintaining a high conversion efficiency. Here we report on-chip SHG that simultaneously achieves a large tunability and a high conversion efficiency inside a single device. We utilize the unique strong thermo-optic birefringence of LN to achieve flexible temperature tuning of type-I inter-modal phase matching. We experimentally demonstrate spectral tuning with a tuning slope of 0.84 nm/K for a telecom-band pump, and a nonlinear conversion efficiency of 4.7% W$^{-1}$, in a LN nanophotonic waveguide only 8~mm long. Our device shows great promise for efficient on-chip wavelength conversion to produce highly-tunable coherent visible light for broad applications, while taking advantage of the mature and cost-effective telecom laser technology.