In a significant advancement for integrated photonics, a team of researchers from Columbia University, led by Professor Qiushi Guo, has developed a novel optical amplification device that spans a broad range of wavelengths, from visible to near-infrared (NIR). This breakthrough could have substantial implications for various applications in quantum sensing, metrology, and classical communications.
The team, including Guanyu Han, Wenjun Deng, Yu Wang, Ziyao Feng, Wei Wang, Meng Tian, Yu Liu, Souvik Biswas, Carlos A. Meriles, and Andrea Alù, has introduced an electrically reconfigurable optical parametric amplifier (OPA) architecture on lithium niobate integrated photonics. Traditional semiconductor and ion-doped amplifiers have limited gain bandwidths due to fixed energy levels, while continuous OPAs from visible to NIR have been challenging to achieve because of dispersion-limited bandwidth and the need for high pump powers in the visible or ultraviolet (UV) ranges.
The researchers overcame these limitations by combining ultra-high effective nonlinearity, high-order dispersion engineering, and local electro-thermal tuning of quasi-phase matching. This innovative approach allows their device to achieve record gain spectral spanning more than an optical octave, from 770 to 1650 nm. This range is crucial as it covers key transitions of many photonic quantum systems and all telecommunication bands. Notably, the device delivers a peak on-chip gain of 23.67 dB with a single 1060 nm pump at 90 mW average on-chip power, eliminating the need for high-power, wavelength-tunable visible or UV pumps.
For the energy industry, this research opens new avenues for multi-functional, reconfigurable photonics that unify the visible and infrared regimes. Practical applications could include enhanced quantum sensing for improved monitoring and control of energy systems, advanced metrology for more precise measurements in energy production and distribution, and more efficient classical communication systems for better data management in smart grids and other energy infrastructure. The research was published in the journal Nature Photonics.
This article is based on research available at arXiv.