Photonic Integration Beyond Silicon

Microwave photonics demands on photonic circuits go beyond what can be delivered with silicon photonics alone. The potential for next generation integration platforms, including silicon nitride and tantalum pentoxide, to handle high power, deliver low phase noise, and realize photonic microwave functional circuits will be described. This platform opens performance over new ranges, not achievable with other integration techniques, to bring power efficient, ultra-high systems to the chip-scale and enable transformative signal processing, computation and communications techniques.