Integrated electro-optic isolator on thin-film lithium niobate

Optical isolators are indispensable components of almost any optical system and used to protect a laser from unwanted reflections for phase-stable coherent operation. The emergence chip-scale systems, powered by semiconductor lasers that integrated on the same chip, has generated demand fully isolator. Conventional approaches, which rely use magneto-optic materials break Lorentz reciprocity, present substantial challenges in terms material integration. Although alternative magnetic-free approaches have been explored, an isolator with low insertion loss, high isolation ratio, broad bandwidth power consumption monolithic platform is yet be achieved. Here we realize non-reciprocal travelling-wave-based electro-optic thin-film lithium niobate. enables maximum 48.0 dB on-chip loss 0.5 uses single-frequency microwave drive 21 dBm. ratio remains larger than 37 across tunable wavelength range 1,510 1,630 nm. We hybrid distributed feedback laser–lithium niobate module successfully protects single-mode operation linewidth reflection. Our result represents important step towards practical high-performance chip. An microwave-driven travelling-wave phase modulation. exhibits at around 1,553 nm dB.