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Multi-octave frequency comb from an ultra-low-threshold nanophotonic parametric oscillator

Nature Photonics (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Ultra-broadband frequency combs coherently unite distant portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. They underpin discoveries in ultra-fast science and serve as the building blocks of modern photonic technologies. Despite tremendous progress in integrated sources of frequency combs, achieving multi-octave operation on chip has remained elusive mainly because of the energy demand of typical spectral broadening processes. Here we break this barrier and demonstrate multi-octave frequency comb generation using an optical parametric oscillator in nanophotonic lithium niobate with only femtojoules of pump energy. Leveraging this ultra-low threshold and dispersion engineering, we accessed a previously unexplored optical parametric oscillator regime that enables highly efficient and stable coherent spectral broadening. We achieve orders-of-magnitude reduction in the energy requirement compared with the other techniques, confirm the coherence of the comb, and present a path towards more efficient and wider spectral broadening. Our results pave the way for ultra-short-pulse and ultra-broadband on-chip nonlinear photonic systems for numerous applications.

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Fig. 1: Principle and design of the multi-octave nanophotonic OPO.
Fig. 2: OPO characterization.
Fig. 3: Simulation results showing different operation regimes of the nanophotonic OPO.
Fig. 4: Performance comparison of integrated spectral broadening and frequency comb sync-pumped OPOs.

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Data availability

All data are available in the Article or the Supplementary Information. The data files supporting the plots in the main text are available via figshare at https://figshare.com/s/a9e01f7ca865c5dfd390 (ref. 68).

Code availability

The code used for finding both effective index and solving the nonlinear propagation is based on the snow library available via GitHub at https://github.com/ledezmaluism/snow (ref. 69). Any further computer code used in this paper is available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The device nanofabrication was performed at the Kavli Nanoscience Institute (KNI) at Caltech. We thank M. Bagheri for loaning equipment. We gratefully acknowledge support from ARO grant number W911NF-23-1-0048, NSF grant numbers 1846273, 1918549 and 2408297, AFOSR award number FA9550-23-1-0755, DARPA award number D23AP00158, the Center for Sensing to Intelligence at Caltech, and NASA/JPL. We wish to thank NTT Research for their financial support.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Ryoto Sekine, Robert M. Gray.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Ryoto Sekine, Robert M. Gray, Luis Ledezma, Selina Zhou & Alireza Marandi

  2. Department of Physics, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA

    Qiushi Guo

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  1. Ryoto Sekine
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Contributions

R.S. and A.M. conceived the project. R.S. fabricated the devices with assistance from L.L., S.Z. and Q.G. R.M.G. and R.S. performed the measurements and R.M.G. carried out the simulations with initial input from L.L. R.S. and A.M. wrote the manuscript with inputs from all authors. A.M. supervised the project.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alireza Marandi.

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Competing interests

L.L. and A.M. are inventors on granted US patent 11,226,538 that covers thin-film optical parametric oscillators. R.S., R.M.G., L.L., A. Roy and A.M. are inventors on a US provisional patent application filed by the California Institute of Technology (application number 63/466,188). R.M.G., L.L. and A.M. are inventors on a US provisional patent application filed by the California Institute of Technology (application number 63/434,015) on 20 December 2022. R.S., L.L. and A.M. are involved in developing photonic integrated nonlinear circuits at PINC Technologies Inc. R.S., L.L. and A.M. have an equity interest in PINC Technologies Inc. The other authors declare no competing interests.

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Supplementary Sections I–IV, Figs. 1–24 and Discussion.

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Sekine, R., Gray, R.M., Ledezma, L. et al. Multi-octave frequency comb from an ultra-low-threshold nanophotonic parametric oscillator. Nat. Photon. (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-025-01753-7

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