@article{63091, abstract = {{We present the design and characterization of a guided-wave, bright, and highly frequency non-degenerate parametric down-conversion (PDC) source in thin-film lithium niobate. The source generates photon pairs with wavelengths of 815 nm and 1550 nm, linking the visible wavelength regime with telecommunication wavelengths. We confirm the high quality of the generated single photons by determining a value for the heralded second-order correlation function as low as g_h^(2)=(6.7+/-1.1)*10^8-3). Furthermore, we achieve a high spectral brightness of 0.44·10pairs/(smWGHz) which is two orders of magnitude higher than sources based on weakly guiding waveguides. The shape of the PDC spectrum and the strong agreement between the effective and nominal bandwidth highlight our high fabrication quality of periodically poled waveguides. The good agreement between the measured and simulated spectral characteristics of our source demonstrates our excellent understanding of the PDC process. Our result is a valuable step towards practical and scalable quantum communication networks as well as photonic quantum computing.}}, author = {{Babel, Silia and Bollmers, Laura and Roeder, Franz and Ridder, Werner and Golla, Christian and Köthemann, Ronja and Reineke, Bernhard and Herrmann, Harald and Brecht, Benjamin and Eigner, Christof and Padberg, Laura and Silberhorn, Christine}}, issn = {{1094-4087}}, journal = {{Optics Express}}, number = {{25}}, publisher = {{Optica Publishing Group}}, title = {{{Ultrabright, two-color photon pair source based on thin-film lithium niobate for bridging visible and telecom wavelengths}}}, doi = {{10.1364/oe.571605}}, volume = {{33}}, year = {{2025}}, } @article{62713, abstract = {{Periodically poled thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) crystals are the fundamental building block for highly-efficient quantum light sources and frequency converters. The efficiency of these devices is strongly dependent on the interaction length between the light and the nonlinear material, scaling quadratically with this parameter. Nevertheless, the fabrication of long, continuously poled areas in TFLN remains challenging, the length of continuously poled areas rarely exceeds 10 mm. In this work, we demonstrate a significant progress in this field achieving the periodic poling of continuous poled areas of 70 mm length with a 3 μm poling period and a close to 50 % duty cycle. We compare two poling electrode design approaches to fabricate long, continuous poled areas. The first approach involves the poling of a single, continuous 70 mm long electrode. The second utilize a segmented approach including the poling of more than 20 individual sections forming together a 70 mm long poling area with no stitching errors. While the continuous electrode allows for faster fabrication, the segmented approach allows to individually optimize the poling resulting in less duty cycle variation. A detailed analysis of the periodic poling results reveals that the results of both are consistent with previously reported poling outcomes for shorter devices. Thus, we demonstrate wafer-scale periodic poling exceeding chiplet-size without any loss in the periodic poling quality. Our work presents a key step towards highly-efficient, narrow-bandwidth and low-pump power nonlinear optical devices.}}, author = {{Bollmers, Laura and Spiegelberg, Noah and Rüsing, Michael and Eigner, Christof and Padberg, Laura and Silberhorn, Christine}}, issn = {{2192-8606}}, journal = {{Nanophotonics}}, pages = {{4761}}, publisher = {{Walter de Gruyter GmbH}}, title = {{{Segmented finger electrodes to optimize ultra-long continuous wafer-scale periodic poling in thin-film lithium niobate}}}, doi = {{10.1515/nanoph-2025-0461}}, volume = {{14}}, year = {{2025}}, } @article{60566, author = {{Bocchini, Adriana and Rüsing, Michael and Bollmers, Laura and Lengeling, Sebastian and Mues, Philipp and Padberg, Laura and Gerstmann, Uwe and Silberhorn, Christine and Eigner, Christof and Schmidt, Wolf Gero}}, issn = {{2475-9953}}, journal = {{Physical Review Materials}}, number = {{7}}, publisher = {{American Physical Society (APS)}}, title = {{{Mg dopants in lithium niobate: Defect models and impact on domain inversion}}}, doi = {{10.1103/5wz1-bjyr}}, volume = {{9}}, year = {{2025}}, } @article{57028, abstract = {{Lithium niobate and lithium tantalate are among the most widespread materials for nonlinear, integrated photonics. Mixed crystals with arbitrary Nb–Ta ratios provide an additional degree of freedom to not only tune materials properties, such as the birefringence but also leverage the advantages of the singular compounds, for example, by combining the thermal stability of lithium tantalate with the larger nonlinear or piezoelectric constants of lithium niobate. Periodic poling allows to achieve phase-matching independent of waveguide geometry and is, therefore, one of the commonly used methods in integrated nonlinear optics. For mixed crystals, periodic poling has been challenging so far due to the lack of homogeneous, mono-domain crystals, which severely inhibit domain growth and nucleation. In this work, we investigate surface-near (<1μm depth) domain inversion on x-cut lithium niobate tantalate mixed crystals via electric field poling and lithographically structured electrodes. We find that naturally occurring head-to-head or tail-to-tail domain walls in the as-grown crystal inhibit domain inversion at a larger scale. However, periodic poling is possible if the gap size between the poling electrodes is of the same order of magnitude or smaller than the average size of naturally occurring domains. This work provides the basis for the nonlinear optical application of lithium niobate tantalate mixed crystals.}}, author = {{Bollmers, Laura and Babai-Hemati, Tobias and Koppitz, Boris and Eigner, Christof and Padberg, Laura and Rüsing, Michael and Eng, Lukas M. and Silberhorn, Christine}}, issn = {{0003-6951}}, journal = {{Applied Physics Letters}}, number = {{15}}, publisher = {{AIP Publishing}}, title = {{{Surface-near domain engineering in multi-domain x-cut lithium niobate tantalate mixed crystals}}}, doi = {{10.1063/5.0210972}}, volume = {{125}}, year = {{2024}}, } @misc{59259, author = {{Schwabe, Tobias and Rüsing, Michael and Staal, Niels and Schwengelbeck, Max and Bollmers, Laura and Padberg, Laura and Eigner, Christof and Silberhorn, Christine and Scheytt, J. Christoph}}, publisher = {{Zenodo}}, title = {{{Quantum photonic systems in CMOS compatible silicon nitride technology }}}, doi = {{10.5281/zenodo.15124929}}, year = {{2024}}, } @article{45850, abstract = {{Interference between single photons is key for many quantum optics experiments and applications in quantum technologies, such as quantum communication or computation. It is advantageous to operate the systems at telecommunication wavelengths and to integrate the setups for these applications in order to improve stability, compactness and scalability. A new promising material platform for integrated quantum optics is lithium niobate on insulator (LNOI). Here, we realise Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) interference between telecom photons from an engineered parametric down-conversion source in an LNOI directional coupler. The coupler has been designed and fabricated in house and provides close to perfect balanced beam splitting. We obtain a raw HOM visibility of (93.5 ± 0.7) %, limited mainly by the source performance and in good agreement with off-chip measurements. This lays the foundation for more sophisticated quantum experiments in LNOI.}}, author = {{Babel, Silia and Bollmers, Laura and Massaro, Marcello and Luo, Kai Hong and Stefszky, Michael and Pegoraro, Federico and Held, Philip and Herrmann, Harald and Eigner, Christof and Brecht, Benjamin and Padberg, Laura and Silberhorn, Christine}}, issn = {{1094-4087}}, journal = {{Optics Express}}, keywords = {{Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics}}, number = {{14}}, publisher = {{Optica Publishing Group}}, title = {{{Demonstration of Hong-Ou-Mandel interference in an LNOI directional coupler}}}, doi = {{10.1364/oe.484126}}, volume = {{31}}, year = {{2023}}, }