Integrated optical pattern generation on thin-film lithium niobate with electro-optic modulators and phase-change material cells

Reconfigurable photonic integrated circuits enable high-bandwidth signal shaping with the prospect for scalability and compact footprint. Cointegration of electro-optical tunability with nonvolatile attenuation through func-tional materials allows for implementing photonic devices that operate on both phase and amplitude. Based on this approach, we propose an integrated photonic design for optical pattern generation deploying a continuous -wave laser and a single electrical function generator. We employ the nonvolatile and reconfigurable phase-change material Ge2Sb2Te5 (GST) as a tunable attenuator for an integrated photonic circuit on the lithium-niobate-on-insulator (LNOI) platform. The GST can be switched between its amorphous and crystalline phases, leading to an optical contrast of similar to=18 dB. Combining this with integrated electro-optical modulators with a 4 GHz band-width in LNOI enables the generation of short optical pulses, based on the principles of inverse discrete Fourier transform. (c) 2023 Optica Publishing Group