Ultrahigh-Efficiency Second Harmonic Generation in a Reverse-Polarization Dual-Layer Crystalline Thin Film Nanophotonic Waveguide

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates ultrahigh-efficiency second harmonic generation in a dual-layer lithium niobate waveguide using modal phase matching, achieving record conversion efficiency and advancing nonlinear photonic device development.

Contribution

It introduces a novel dual-layer waveguide design with reversed polarizations enabling highly efficient modal phase matching for SHG.

Findings

Achieved 5540%/W/cm/cm SHG conversion efficiency experimentally.

Demonstrated modal phase matching in a tightly confined nanophotonic waveguide.

Provided new strategies for high-performance nonlinear photonic devices.

Abstract

Second harmonic generation (SHG), as one of the most significant \c{hi}(2) nonlinear optical processes, plays crucial roles in a broad variety of optical and photonic applications. Designing various delicate schemes to achieve highly efficient SHG has become a long standing and challenging topic in field of nonlinear optics. Despite numerous success on SHG based on birefringent phase matching and quasi-phase matching, so far, modal phase matching (MPM) for SHG in tightly light-confined structures has still in its infancy. Here, we propose a new scheme to realize highly-efficient SHG via MPM by using a nanophotonic LiNbO3 thin-film waveguide consists of two bonded layers with internally reversed polarizations. In such a dual-layer ridge waveguide based on lithium niobate on insulator, upon optical excitation at 1574.6 nm, we observe SHG at 787.3 nm with ultrahigh conversion efficiency of 5,540% /W/cm/cm experimentally. This work advances our understanding on modal-phase-matched SHG and other quadratic optical nonlinear process, offering additional strategies for development of high-performance nonlinear photonic devices in on-chip platforms.