Group-velocity dispersion engineering of tantalum pentoxide integrated photonics

Published

February 9, 2021

Author(s)

Jennifer Black, Richelle H. Streater, Kieran F. LaMee, David Carlson, Su P. Yu, Scott Papp

Abstract

Designing integrated photonics, especially to leverage Kerr-nonlinear optics, requires accurate and precise knowledge of refractive index across the visible to infrared spectral ranges. Tantalum pentoxide (Ta2O5, tantala) is an emerging material platform for integrated photonics and nanophotonics that offers broadband ultralow loss, moderately high nonlinearity, and advantages for scalable and heterogeneous integration. We present refractive-index measurements on a thin film of tantala, and we explore the efficacy of this data for group-velocity dispersion (GVD) engineering with waveguide and ring-resonator devices. In particular, the observed spectral extent of supercontinuum generation and the wavelength dependence of free- spectral range in fabricated waveguides and resonators provide a sensitive test of our integrated-photonics design process. Our work opens up new design possibilities with tantala, including with octave-spanning soliton microcombs.

Citation

Optics Letters

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

Integrated optics, dispersion, nonlinear optics

Citation

Black, J. , Streater, R. , LaMee, K. , Carlson, D. , Yu, S. and Papp, S. (2021), Group-velocity dispersion engineering of tantalum pentoxide integrated photonics, Optics Letters, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=931071 (Accessed December 3, 2025)