Pockels effect

Summary

The Pockels effect or Pockels electro-optic effect, also known as the linear electro-optic effect, is named after Friedrich Carl Alwin Pockels who studied the effect in 1893. The Pockels effect is a directionally dependent linear variation in the refractive index of an optical medium that occurs in response to the application of an electric field. The non-linear counterpart, the Kerr effect, causes changes in the refractive index at a rate proportional to the square of the applied electric field. In optical media, the Pockels effect causes changes in birefringence that vary in proportion to the strength of the applied electric field. The Pockels effect occurs in crystals that lack inversion symmetry, such as KH2PO4 (KDP), KD2PO4 (KD*P or DKDP), lithium niobate (LiNbO3), beta-barium borate (BBO), and in other non-centrosymmetric media such as electric-field poled polymers or glasses. The Pockels effect has been elucidated through extensive study of electro-optic properties in mater

Official source

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pockels_effect

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Nonlinear Frequency Conversion in the Hybrid Silicon Nitride - Lithium Niobate Integrated Platform

Mikhail Churaev, Tobias Kippenberg, Junqiu Liu, Viacheslav Snigirev, Rui Ning Wang

We demonstrate optical frequency comb generation in hybrid high-Q optical microresonators fabricated using direct wafer bonding of photonic Damascene silicon nitride wafer with thin-film lithium niobate-on-insulator (LNOI). The devices enable direct phase control via Pockels effect.

IEEE2021

Microstructure and ferroelectricity of BaTiO3 thin films on Si for integrated photonics

Patrik Hoffmann, Chiara Marchiori, Michael Oliver Reinke

Significant progress has been made in integrating novel materials into silicon photonic structures in order to extend the functionality of photonic circuits. One of these promising optical materials is BaTiO3 or barium titanate (BTO) that exhibits a very large Pockels coefficient as required for high-speed light modulators. However, all previous demonstrations show a noticable reduction of the Pockels effect in BTO thin films deposited on silicon substrates compared to BTO bulk crystals. Here, we report on the strong dependence of the Pockels effect in BTO thin films on their microstructure, and provide guidelines on how to engineer thin films with strong electro-optic response. We employ several deposition methods such as molecular beam epitaxy and chemical vapor deposition to realize BTO thin films with different morphology and crystalline structure. While a linear electro-optic response is present even in porous, polycrystalline BTO thin films with an effective Pockels coefficient r(eff). = 6 pmV(-1), it is maximized for dense, tetragonal, epitaxial BTO films (r(eff) = 140 pm V-1). By identifying the key structural predictors of electro-optic response in BTO/Si, we provide a roadmap to fully exploit the linear electro-optic effect in novel hybrid oxide/semiconductor nanophotonic devices.

Institute of Physics2017

Nonlinear Frequency Conversion in the Hybrid Si3N4 - LiNbO3 Integrated Platform

Mikhail Churaev, Tobias Kippenberg, Junqiu Liu, Viacheslav Snigirev, Rui Ning Wang

IEEE2021