Acoustoelectrically enhanced acousto-optic modulation in an integrated silicon nitride and thin film lithium niobate platform
Abstract
Acoustoelectric interactions in piezoelectric-semiconductor heterostructures allow the propagation characteristics of microwave frequency phonons in piezoelectric media to be controlled and radically enhanced, providing electrically controllable phonon gain, large velocity tuning, isolation, and circulation, as well as extremely large electron-mediated phononic nonlinearities. Here, for the first time, we create such a piezoelectric-semiconductor heterostructure with lithium-niobate-on-insulator and InGaAs that also supports guided optical modes through the addition of a silicon nitride waveguide and modification of the acoustic materials to provide an optical lower cladding. We use this new architecture to demonstrate acoustoelectrically enhanced acousto-optic modulation, where 1 GHz phonons are piezoelectrically generated and acoustoelectrically amplified on-chip by up to 60 dB before impinging on the optical waveguide, providing pure phase modulation with a VπL figure-of-merit of 0.077 V-cm while only consuming 3.77 mW of DC electrical power to provide the amplification. We then consider future applications enabled by these functionalities and describe a novel tunable optical delay and an optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) analog---an acoustoelectrically enhanced opto-acoustic oscillator (AE-OAO). We show that using Brillouin optomechanical transduction and acoustoelectrically lossless acoustic time delay, the AE-OAO could replace kilometers of optical fiber delay used in OEOs but on a single, centimeter-scale chip.
Related
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BibTeX
@misc{storey2026acoustoelectrically,
title = {{Acoustoelectrically enhanced acousto-optic modulation in an integrated silicon nitride and thin film lithium niobate platform}},
author = {Matthew J. Storey and John H. Dallyn and Kiyan Hocek and Michael Miller and Peter T. Rakich and Scott A. Diddams and Nils T. Otterstrom and Matt Eichenfield},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.36439},
eprint = {2609.36439},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.36439},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Acoustoelectrically enhanced acousto-optic modulation in an integrated silicon nitride and thin film lithium niobate platform
AU - Matthew J. Storey
AU - John H. Dallyn
AU - Kiyan Hocek
AU - Michael Miller
AU - Peter T. Rakich
AU - Scott A. Diddams
AU - Nils T. Otterstrom
AU - Matt Eichenfield
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/29
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.36439
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.36439
AB - Acoustoelectric interactions in piezoelectric-semiconductor heterostructures allow the propagation characteristics of microwave frequency phonons in piezoelectric media to be controlled and radically enhanced, providing electrically controllable phonon gain, large velocity tuning, isolation, and circulation, as well as extremely large electron-mediated phononic nonlinearities. Here, for the first time, we create such a piezoelectric-semiconductor heterostructure with lithium-niobate-on-insulator and InGaAs that also supports guided optical modes through the addition of a silicon nitride waveguide and modification of the acoustic materials to provide an optical lower cladding. We use this new architecture to demonstrate acoustoelectrically enhanced acousto-optic modulation, where 1 GHz phonons are piezoelectrically generated and acoustoelectrically amplified on-chip by up to 60 dB before impinging on the optical waveguide, providing pure phase modulation with a V_πL figure-of-merit of 0.077 V-cm while only consuming 3.77 mW of DC electrical power to provide the amplification. We then consider future applications enabled by these functionalities and describe a novel tunable optical delay and an optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) analog---an acoustoelectrically enhanced opto-acoustic oscillator (AE-OAO). We show that using Brillouin optomechanical transduction and acoustoelectrically lossless acoustic time delay, the AE-OAO could replace kilometers of optical fiber delay used in OEOs but on a single, centimeter-scale chip.
ER -