Journal Article

Design and function of a vertical micro-cavity optical parametric oscillator

McKenna, Timothy P, Jankowski, Marc, Yanagimoto, Ryotatsu, Karni, Ouri, Ng, Edwin, Chervy, Thibault

2025

Overview

Optical parametric oscillators (OPOs) have emerged as highly versatile platforms for signal processing, machine learning, and all-optical computation. In particular, integrated photonic circuits have demonstrated an efficient and scalable route to build OPO networks through time-multiplexing. However, for tasks requiring massive parallelism with low latency, spatial multiplexing with vertical micro-cavities is a more natural approach to overcome the shoreline density limits of edge-emitting photonics. To this end, we propose an approach to realizing vertical micro-cavity OPOs (VCOPOs) leveraging recent developments in micro-optical fabrication techniques. We consider thin film LiNbO3-filled dielectric micro-cavities as a case study, but the approach taken here is readily extended to any χ(2) nonlinear medium. Based on conservative industrial fabrication tolerances, we predict a minimal foot-print of ca. 5×5μm2, while achieving oscillation thresholds in the microwatts range. Advanced fabrication methods open a path toward sub-µW oscillation threshold, with a ratio of single-photon non-linear coupling rate to dissipation rate g/κ>5%. We propose a theoretical framework for the classical and quantum operation of two dimensional arrays of VCOPOs, and discuss potential applications such as surface emitting devices, spatially multi-mode parametric amplifiers and squeezers, as well as optical simulators of classical and quantum Hamiltonians.

• Publisher: IOP Publishing
• Subject: Hamiltonian functions / Holes / Lithium niobates / Machine learning / nano-photonics / non-linear optics / Optical Parametric Oscillators / Parametric amplifiers / Photonics / quantum optics / Simulators / Thin films / Time multiplexing / Vertical oscillations