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Updated: Oct 10, 2025
Quantum State Engineering of Light with Continuous-wave Optical Parametric Oscillators
Published on: May 30, 2014
On-chip optical parametric oscillation into the visible: generating red, orange, yellow, and green from a
Xiyuan Lu1,2, Gregory Moille1,3, Ashutosh Rao1,4
1Microsystems and Nanotechnology Division, Physical Measurement Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD 20899, USA.
Abstract:
The on-chip generation of coherent, single-frequency laser light that can be tuned across the visible spectrum would help enable a variety of applications in spectroscopy, metrology, and quantum science. Recently, third-order optical parametric oscillation (OPO) in a microresonator has shown great promise as an efficient and scalable approach towards this end. However, considering visible light generation, so far only red light at < 420 THz (near the edge of the visible band) has been reported. In this work, we overcome strong material dispersion at visible wavelengths and demonstrate on-chip OPO in a Si3N4 microresonator covering >130 THz of the visible spectrum, including red, orange, yellow, and green wavelengths. In particular, using an input pump laser that is scanned 5 THz in the near-infrared from 386 THz to 391 THz, the OPO output signal is tuned from the near-infrared at 395 THz to the visible at 528 THz, while the OPO output idler is tuned from the near-infrared at 378 THz to the infrared at 254 THz. The widest signal-idler separation of 274 THz is more than an octave in span and is the widest demonstrated for a nanophotonic OPO to date. More generally, our work shows how nonlinear nanophotonics can transform light from readily accessible compact near-infrared lasers to targeted visible wavelengths of interest.
