New from the Wasserman group, we demonstrate efficient thermo-optic (TO) tuning of barium titanate (BTO) modulators. This work was led by graduate student HEE GON KIM, in collaboration with Alex Demkov‘s group and La Luce Cristallina. While TO tuning is rather slow, compared to its electro-optic counterpart, it is essential for trimming integrated photonic components, and can offer kHz or higher modulation bandwidths. In this work, Hee Gon shows that we can achieve TO modulation with bandwidths as high as 34kHz, low drive powers, and moreover, we can use these results to extract a thermo-optic coefficient for BTO which will prove useful for future photonic integrated circuit designs using this material. This work was funded by Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) and the Office of Naval Research, and published in IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.
