Waveguide integrated high performance magneto-optical isolators and circulators on silicon nitride platforms

Abstract: Optical isolators and circulators are indispensable for photonic integrated circuits (PICs). Despite of significant progress in silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platforms, integrated optical isolators and circulators have been rarely reported on silicon nitride (SiN) platforms. In this paper, we report monolithic integration of magneto-optical (MO) isolators on SiN platforms with record high performances based on standard silicon photonics foundry process and magneto-optical thin film deposition. We successfully grow high quality MO garnet thin films on SiN with large Faraday rotation up to -5900 deg/cm. We show a superior magneto-optical figure of merit (FoM) of MO/SiN waveguides compared to that of MO/SOI in an optimized device design. We demonstrate TM/TE mode broadband and narrow band optical isolators and circulators on SiN with high isolation ratio, low cross talk and low insertion loss. In particular, we observe 1 dB insertion loss and 28 dB isolation ratio in a SiN racetrack resonator-based isolator at 1570.2 nm wavelength. The low thermo-optic coefficient of SiN also ensures excellent temperature stability of the device. Our work paves the way for integration of high performance nonreciprocal photonic devices on SiN platforms.