Photorefractive effect in LiNbO${}_3$-based integrated-optical circuits for continuous variable experiments

Abstract

We investigate the impact of photorefractive effect on lithium niobate integrated quantum photonic circuits dedicated to continuous variable on-chip experiments. The circuit main building blocks, i.e. cavities, directional couplers, and periodically poled nonlinear waveguides are studied. This work demonstrates that, even when the effect of photorefractivity is weaker than spatial mode hopping, they might compromise the success of on-chip quantum photonics experiments. We describe in detail the characterization methods leading to the identification of this possible issue. We also study to which extent device heating represents a viable solution to counter this effect. We focus on photorefractive effect induced by light at 775 nm, in the context of the generation of non-classical light at 1550 nm telecom wavelength.

References in corpus (4)

• Photonic quantum technologies
• Quantum photonics at telecom wavelengths based on lithium niobate waveguides
• Continuous-wave 6-dB-squeezed light with 2.5-THz-bandwidth from single-mode PPLN waveguide
• Generation of continuous-wave broadband Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen beams using periodically-poled lithium niobate waveguides