Voltage-tunable optical parametric oscillator with an alternating dispersion dimer integrated on a chip

Abstract

Optical parametric oscillators enable the conversion of pump light to new frequency bands using nonlinear optical processes. Recent advances in integrated nonlinear photonics have led to the creation of compact, chip-scale sources via Kerr-nonlinearity-induced parametric oscillations. While these sources have provided broadband wavelength tuning, the ability to tune the emission wavelength via dynamically altering the dispersion has not been attained so far. Here we present a voltage-tunable, on-chip integrated optical parametric oscillator based on an alternating-dispersion dimer, allowing us to tune the emission over nearly 20 THz near 1550 nm. Unlike previous approaches, our device eliminates the need for a widely tunable pump laser source and provides efficient pump filtering at the drop port of the auxiliary ring. Integration of this scheme on a chip opens up the possibility of compact and low-cost voltage-tunable parametric oscillators with diverse application possibilities.