Electro-optic modulation of high-Q lithium niobate whispering gallery resonator with integrated ground plane (Conference Presentation)

We experimentally demonstrate electro-optic modulation in thin film lithium niobate microdisk resonators with an integrated bottom electrode fabricated from a z-cut Lithium Niobate on Insulator wafer. The structure consisted of a 400nm thick crystalline z-cut lithium niobate/2um SiO2/20nm Cr/100nm Au/10nm Cr film stack on top of a z-cut lithium niobate handle wafer. The integrated bottom electrode is located 2um beneath the resonator. This proximity, coupled with positioning an electrical probe close to the top of the resonator, allows large optical frequency shifts with low voltages. We observed a 0.111pm/V resonance shift of vertically polarized (TM) optical whispering gallery modes, with the voltage applied perpendicular to the wafer surface. This corresponds to a shift of one optical linewidth at an applied voltage of 180V, using the r33 component of the eletro-optic tensor. We observed a smaller shift of 0.066pm/V for the radially polarized (TE) modes, using the r13 component of the electro-optic tensor. The experiment was performed using a 1550nm tunable laser that was coupled to the optical resonator modes using a tapered optical fiber. To measure the electro-optic shift of the resonance, a voltage was applied across the device via DC probe tips and the peak shift was calibrated with a Toptica WS6 IR wavemeter with 200 MHz absolute accuracy. We also present a finite element model that accurately predicts the resonance shift as a function of applied voltage for both polarizations.