We present a framework for designing high-performance Time-Stepped Optical Frequency Comb (TSOFC) lasers comprising: (i) Thin Film Lithium Niobate (TFLN) Integrated Circuit (IC) for high-bandwidth photonic devices; (ii) Semiconductor Optical Amplifier for optical gain; (iii) silicon CMOS IC for drive circuits; and (iv) three-dimensional integration for dense connectivity between CMOS and TFLN. We target high-resolution Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) as an example application; our TSOFC design switches between 128 optical wavelengths at 3 GHz switching rate (to meet lateral, axial, and temporal resolution requirements) with <2 Watts total system power consumption (using a 180 nm technology node for CMOS IC).
Time-stepped optical frequency comb (TSOFC) sources have extended the imaging capabilities of optical coherence tomography (OCT). However, existing TSOFC laser architectures have significant limitations in cost, complexity, and performance. A recently developed active integrated photonic circuit platform – lithium niobate-on-insulator (LNOI) – has the potential to address these limitations. We designed and fabricated custom LNOI integrated photonic circuits and demonstrated LNOI-based TSOFC sources for OCT. The fabricated LNOI photonic chips support optical frequency switching at the 1 ns time-scale, although the current laser prototypes are limited by the driving electronics to switching times of several hundred nanoseconds.
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