Electro-optically programmable photonic circuits enabled by wafer-scale integration on thin-film lithium niobate
Zheng Yong, Haozong Zhong, Haisu Zhang, Lvbin Song, Jian Liu, Youting Liang, Zhaoxiang Liu, Jinming Chen, Junxia Zhou, Zhiwei Fang, Min Wang, Lin Li, Rongbo Wu, Ya Cheng
Abstract
Programmable photonic circuits performing universal linear-optical transformations underpin vital functions in photonic quantum information processing, quantum-enhanced sensor networks, machine learning, and many other intriguing applications. Recent advances in photonic integrated circuits facilitate monolithic integration of externally controlled Mach-Zehnder interferometers (MZIs) which can implement arbitrary unitary transformation on a large number of input/output modes. In this work, we demonstrate a $4\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}4$ programmable linear photonic circuit on lithium niobate on an insulator platform employing fast, power-efficient, and low-loss electro-optical phase shifters, showing enormous advantages in terms of configuration rate and power consumption. Our device composed of cascaded MZIs possesses a total on-chip power dissipation of only 1.5 mW when operating at 100 MHz modulation rate. Our MZIs exhibit high bandwidth of 22.5 GHz, fast switching with 160-ps rise time and 120-ps fall time, low insertion loss of 0.15 dB, and on-chip extinction ratio of \ensuremath{-}34 dB for both cross and bar routes.