Electro‐Optic‐Locked, Frequency‐Agile Integrated Pockels Laser Driving Ultra‐Precise Ranging

Abstract

Integrated semiconductor lasers drive advancements in modern information society, with their transition to III‐V/external cavity structures enhancing coherence and tunability for diverse coherent detection applications. However, challenges remain in key aspects of integrated lasers including close‐to‐carrier frequency noise and chirp nonlinearity. This work presents an electro‐optic‐locked, frequency‐agile integrated Pockels laser to address these problems. It applies a self‐injection locking architecture based on lithium niobate on insulator platform, combining a 10‐MHz tuning operation and an over‐4‐GHz chirp bandwidth. Leveraging the Pockels dynamics for real‐time electro‐optic locking, it realizes an integral linewidth of 2.58 kHz @ 1 ms and a relative chirp nonlinearity of , which sets a record in integrated Pockels lasers. This Pockels laser directly drives precise ranging, where consistent results across 100 measurements are achieved for both 26‐m LiDAR ranging and 20‐km fiber ranging, featuring centimeter‐level resolutions. Furthermore, its long‐term coherence is highlighted by demonstrating signal‐to‐noise ratio improvement via coherent pulse accumulation. Unifying high coherence, broadband and precise tunability, and high‐speed operation, this Pockels laser opens up new opportunities in LiDAR and fiber sensing, and is expected to promote microwave photonics, quantum computing and beyond.