Fast-Tunable and Low-Loss Stress-Optical Microsystems

Silicon Nitride (SiN) is an outstanding material for on-chip photonic systems because of its extremely low optical loss, outstanding optical power handling and controllable non-linearity. SiN photonic integrated circuits (PICs) are becoming more commonplace in high performance systems including LIDAR, Optical Frequency Combs, Spatial Light Modulators and Photonic Quantum Processors. In such microsystems, low-loss photonics enhances lidar resolution and range, octave-spanning combs for optical clocks, longer-distance free-space communication and higher intensity light incident on detectors in photonics quantum processors.<br/><br/>However, modulation and tuning of SiN has been limited to thermal heaters because it’s a dielectric amorphous material with no electro-optic coefficients. In this presentation I will present architectures based on piezoMEMS technology to demonstrate stress-optical modulation and tuning of silicon nitride optical ring resonators. Specifically, I will demonstrate high speed tuning of self-injection locked lasers for LIDAR and frequency combs and GHz frequency mechanical resonant actuators for implementing magnetic-free optical isolators. If time permits, I will discuss optomechanical inertial sensors and microwave-to-optical quantum converters in our Piezo-on-Nitride technology platform.<br/><br/>This research is in close collaboration with Professor Tobias Kippenberg’s group at EPFL.