Simone Bianconi

Abstract Erbium (Er) is an attractive gain medium for amplifiers and lasers due to its long excited-state lifetime, low noise and nonlinearity, and temperature stability. Recently developed ultra-low-loss Si3N4 photonic integrated circuits combined with Er ion implantation have enabled high-performance on-chip Er lasers, but manufacturing scalability has been limited by the high 2 MeV implantation required for tightly confined 700-nm-thick waveguides.

We introduce a framework for the design of photonic integrated laser sources for FMCW LiDAR, evaluating trade-offs in key laser metrics such as linewidth, chirp linearity and rate, based on laser-system co-design metrics. We review the main performance requirements for mid-range applications, with the goal of guiding ongoing research and commercial development.