Meter-long broadband chirped Bragg gratings for on-chip dispersion control and pulse shaping

TL;DR

This paper presents meter-long chirped Bragg gratings on silicon nitride for on-chip dispersion control, enabling high-fidelity pulse shaping, compression, and applications in microscopy with low loss and large bandwidth.

Contribution

Design and fabrication of ultra-low-loss, meter-long chirped spiral Bragg gratings on SiN platform for scalable, high-performance on-chip dispersion management and pulse shaping.

Findings

Achieved 10 ns group delay with >10 nm bandwidth in 30 mm^2 footprint.

Demonstrated high-fidelity pulse compression of electro-optic frequency combs.

Enabled application in wavelength-swept CARS microscopy.

Abstract

Precise on-chip dispersion control is essential for advanced integrated photonic technologies, enabling applications ranging from high-speed communications and sensing to signal processing and biomedical imaging. However, existing on-chip dispersion control methods still suffer from substantial loss and a limited dispersion-bandwidth product (DBP) far from application needs. As a result, on-chip systems continue to rely exclusively on off-chip dispersion control solutions provided by optical fiber or bulky free-space optics. To overcome these limitations, we design and fabricate meter-long chirped spiral Bragg gratings (CSBGs) on the ultra-low-loss silicon nitride (SiN) photonic platform for advanced dispersion control. Our device achieves a 10-nanosecond group delay with customizable bandwidths exceeding 10 nanometers within a compact footprint of only 30 $\text {mm} ^2$, surpassing the physical limits of fiber-based grating devices. More importantly, CSBGs can simultaneously possess the characteristics of high stability, low latency, and a large DBP, thanks to the ultra-low-loss SiN platform with a loss of only 0.3 dB/m. Leveraging the precise and stable dispersion profile, we demonstrate high-fidelity pulse shaping and compression of electro-optic frequency combs (EOCs) with a 1-GHz repetition rate centered across the entire reflection bandwidth. The compressed pulse has an on-chip peak (average) power of 21.6 watts (580 milliwatts). Furthermore, we showcase for the first time the application of on-chip pulse-compressed EOC in wavelength-swept coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS) microscopy. Our work provides integrated photonics with a long-sought, scalable, and robust solution for high-performance on-chip dispersion control, empowering a new generation of on-chip functionalities.