Narrow beam and low-sidelobe electro-optic beam steering on thin-film lithium niobate optical phased array

Optical beam steering has become indispensable in free-space optical communications, light detection and ranging (LiDAR), mapping, and projection. Optical phased array (OPA) leads this field as versatile and miniaturized platform to this end, yet conventional versions still suffer from a narrow steering field of view, insufficient sidelobe suppression, and limited angular resolution in electro-optic (EO) beam steering. Thin-film lithium niobate (LN), with its strong EO effect, offers a powerful integrated-photonics platform to overcome these limitations. Here we present a two-dimensional (2D) EO-steered OPA based on a non-uniformly spaced X-cut thin-film LN ridge-waveguide array. A superlattice ridge design…

• NN
  National Natural Science Foundation of China

  Awards: 62405114, 12404577
• NK
  National Key Research and Development Program of China

  Award: 2023YFA1407200
• NS
  National Safety Academic Fund

  Awards: U2030103, U2330113, U2230111
• BA
  Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation of Guangdong Province

  Awards: 2023A0505050159, 2023A1515110626, 2025B1515020096