Surface Acoustic Wave-Mediated Brillouin Temperature Sensor on Thin-Film Lithium Niobate
Abstract
The emergence of thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) has paved the way for realizing strong Brillouin interactions in lithium niobate platforms, enabling new opportunities in integrated photonics. However, fully harnessing stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) in TFLN for the plethora of Brillouin applications remains an exciting area of research, with significant opportunities for further exploration and technological advancement. Here, we present the first comprehensive experimental and numerical study of the surface acoustic wave (SAW)-mediated Brillouin temperature sensor on a TFLN-on-insulator chip. The proposed technique directly senses the surrounding environment via SAWs, providing an optical-power-efficient platform compatible with existing integrated photonic architectures. Exploiting the strong intermodal Brillouin interactions in x-cut TFLN waveguides, we report a high Brillouin gain of 24.8$ \pm 1.3 m^{-1}W^{-1}$ and a temperature coefficient of −0.73 ± 0.02\,MHz/∘C. Considering the anisotropic nature of lithium niobate, we investigate the temperature dependence of the Brillouin frequency for the propagation directions 0∘, 10∘, 20∘, 30∘ relative to the crystallographic y-axis.
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BibTeX
@misc{kovil2026surface,
title = {{Surface Acoustic Wave-Mediated Brillouin Temperature Sensor on Thin-Film Lithium Niobate}},
author = {Varun Marathan Kovil and Justus Nölkensmeier and Gladys Jara-Schulz and Pratham Kulkarni and Silia Babel and Christian Golla and Rajkumar Jadhav and Christof Eigner and Laura Padberg and Christine Silberhorn and Birgit Stiller},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.34739},
eprint = {2609.34739},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.34739},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Surface Acoustic Wave-Mediated Brillouin Temperature Sensor on Thin-Film Lithium Niobate
AU - Varun Marathan Kovil
AU - Justus Nölkensmeier
AU - Gladys Jara-Schulz
AU - Pratham Kulkarni
AU - Silia Babel
AU - Christian Golla
AU - Rajkumar Jadhav
AU - Christof Eigner
AU - Laura Padberg
AU - Christine Silberhorn
AU - Birgit Stiller
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/28
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.34739
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.34739
AB - The emergence of thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) has paved the way for realizing strong Brillouin interactions in lithium niobate platforms, enabling new opportunities in integrated photonics. However, fully harnessing stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) in TFLN for the plethora of Brillouin applications remains an exciting area of research, with significant opportunities for further exploration and technological advancement. Here, we present the first comprehensive experimental and numerical study of the surface acoustic wave (SAW)-mediated Brillouin temperature sensor on a TFLN-on-insulator chip. The proposed technique directly senses the surrounding environment via SAWs, providing an optical-power-efficient platform compatible with existing integrated photonic architectures. Exploiting the strong intermodal Brillouin interactions in x-cut TFLN waveguides, we report a high Brillouin gain of 24.8$ \pm 1.3 m^{-1}W^{-1}$ and a temperature coefficient of −0.73 ± 0.02\,MHz/^∘C. Considering the anisotropic nature of lithium niobate, we investigate the temperature dependence of the Brillouin frequency for the propagation directions 0^∘, 10^∘, 20^∘, 30^∘ relative to the crystallographic y-axis.
ER -