- Valdez, Forrest;
- Mere, Viphretuo;
- Wang, Xiaoxi;
- Boynton, Nicholas;
- Friedmann, Thomas A;
- Arterburn, Shawn;
- Dallo, Christina;
- Pomerene, Andrew T;
- Starbuck, Andrew L;
- Trotter, Douglas C;
- Lentine, Anthony L;
- Mookherjea, Shayan
High bandwidth, low voltage electro-optic modulators with high optical power handling capability are important for improving the performance of analog optical communications and RF photonic links. Here we designed and fabricated a thin-film lithium niobate (LN) Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) which can handle high optical power of 110 mW, while having 3-dB bandwidth greater than 110 GHz at 1550 nm. The design does not require etching of thin-film LN, and uses hybrid optical modes formed by bonding LN to planarized silicon photonic waveguide circuits. A high optical power handling capability in the MZM was achieved by carefully tapering the underlying Si waveguide to reduce the impact of optically-generated carriers, while retaining a high modulation efficiency. The MZM has a [Formula: see text] product of 3.1 V.cm and an on-chip optical insertion loss of 1.8 dB.