A 3.584 Tbps coherent receiver chip on InP-LiNbO3 wafer-level integration platform

Abstract: The rapid advancement of the thin-film lithium niobate (LiNbO3) platform has established it as a premier choice for high-performance photonics integrated circuits. However, the scalability and cost-efficiency of this platform are hindered by the reliance on chip-level fabrication and integration for passive and active components, necessitating a robust wafer-level LiNbO3 heterogeneous integration platform. Despite its critical role in enabling ultrahigh-speed optical interconnects, as well as optical mmWave/THz sensing and communication, the realization of ultrahigh-speed photodiodes and optical coherent receivers on the LiNbO_3 platform remains an unresolved challenge. This is primarily due to the challenges associated with the large-scale integration of direct-bandgap materials. To address these challenges, we have developed a scalable, high-speed InP-LiNbO3 wafer-level heterogeneous integration platform. This platform facilitates the fabrication of ultrahigh-speed photodiodes with a bandwidth of 140 GHz, capable of receiving high-quality 100-Gbaud pulse amplitude modulation (PAM4) signals. Moreover, we demonstrate a seven-channel, single-polarization I-Q coherent receiver chip with an aggregate receiving capacity of 3.584 Tbit/s. This coherent receiver exhibits a balanced detection bandwidth of 60 GHz and a common mode rejection ratio (CMRR) exceeding 20 dB. It achieves receiving capacities of 600 Gbit/s/\lambda with a 100-Gbaud 64-QAM signal and 512 Gbit/s/\lambda with a 128-Gbaud 16-QAM signal. Furthermore, energy consumption as low as 9.6 fJ/bit and 13.5 fJ/bit is achieved for 200 Gbit/s and 400 Gbit/s capacities, respectively. Our work provides a viable pathway toward enabling Pbps hyperscale data center interconnects, as well as optical mmWave/THz sensing and communication.