Adapted poling to break the nonlinear efficiency limit in nanophotonic lithium niobate waveguides

Nonlinear frequency mixing is a method to extend the wavelength range of optical sources with applications in quantum information and photonic signal processing. Lithium niobate with periodic poling is the most widely used material for frequency mixing due to its strong second-order nonlinear coefficient. The recent development using nanophotonic lithium niobate waveguides promises to improve nonlinear efficiencies by orders of magnitude thanks to subwavelength optical confinement. However, the intrinsic nanoscale inhomogeneity of nanophotonic lithium niobate waveguides limits the coherent interaction length, leading to low nonlinear efficiencies. Here we show improved second-order nonlinear efficiency in nanophotonic lithium niobate waveguides that breaks the limit imposed by nanoscale inhomogeneity. This is realized by developing the adapted poling approach to eliminate the impact of nanoscale inhomogeneity. We realize an overall second-harmonic efficiency of 104% W−1 (without cavity enhancement), approaching the theoretical performance for nanophotonic lithium niobate waveguides. The ideal square dependence of the nonlinear efficiency on the waveguide length is recovered. Phase-matching bandwidths and temperature tuneability are improved through dispersion engineering. We finally demonstrate a conversion ratio from pump to second-harmonic power greater than 80% in a single-pass configuration with pump power as low as 20 mW. Our work therefore breaks the trade-off between the conversion ratio and pump power, offering a potential solution for highly efficient and scalable nonlinear-optical sources, amplifiers and converters. A major limiting factor for nonlinear efficiencies in lithium niobate waveguides, nanoscale thickness inhomogeneity, has been tackled using a fabrication approach called adapted poling.