Long-term Stability of Lithium Niobate on Insulator PICs for Metrological Applications

Abstract

Recently lithium niobate on insulator (LNOI) has emerged as a promising platform for photonic integrated circuits (PICs) owing to the material’s high second order nonlinearity, a large transparency window and high piezo electric coefficients. Published results on LNOI range from efficient electro-optic modulators [1] to broadband supercontinua [2] – [4] . However, lithium niobate has a comparably high sensitivity towards optical damage processes such as photorefractive damage [5] , [6] . Their exact mechanisms are not yet fully understood and the impact on the long-term stability of LNOI devices has not yet been examined. Here, we present long-term measurements showing that during 400 hours of continuous irradiation with a mode-locked laser the supercontinuum spectrum remains stable.