High-efficient coupler for thin-film lithium niobate waveguide devices.

Abstract

Lithium niobate (LN) devices have been widely used in optical communication and nonlinear optics due to its attractive optical properties. The emergence of the thin-film lithium niobate on insulator (LNOI) improves performances of LN-based devices greatly. However, a high-efficient fiber-chip optical coupler is still necessary for the LNOI-based devices for practical applications. In this paper, we demonstrate a highly efficient and polarization-independent edge coupler based on LNOI. The coupler, fabricated by a standard semiconductor process, shows a low fiber-chip coupling loss of 0.54 dB/0.59 dB per facet at 1550 nm for TE/TM light, respectively, when coupled with an ultra-high numerical aperture fiber (UHNAF) of which the mode field diameter is about 3.2 μm. The coupling loss is lower than 1dB/facet for both TE and TM light in the wavelength range of 1527 nm to 1630 nm. A relatively large tolerance for optical misalignment is also proved, due to the coupler's large mode spot size up to 3.2 μm. The coupler shows a promising stability in high optical power and temperature variation.