High-Q Integrated Photonics (Prof. Kerry Vahala)

Once discrete and reliant upon specialized processing techniques for optical loss reduction, high-Q microresonators are today planar, capable of integration, and in some cases fabricated on CMOS foundry lines. After a brief overview of their history and early nonlinear optical demonstrations, I will focus on three areas that illustrate the broad impact of high-Q microresonators. First is their application to Sagnac gyroscopes where recent demonstration of Earth rotation measurement using a Brillouin ring laser gyroscope will be presented. Second is the subject of frequency microcombs with an overview of system demonstrations as well as the recent integration of microcombs with pump laser diodes. Third is a hybrid integrated semiconductor laser with short and long term coherence surpassing high-performance fiber lasers. In each subject area, the fundamental device operating principles will also be presented. Finally, the current and possible future limits of microresonator performance, and untapped application areas, will be discussed.