Dr. Nathan C. Abrams Profile

Dr. Nathan C. Abrams

at Anello Photonics Inc

SPIE Involvement:

Author

Publications (6)

Proceedings Article | 10 June 2024 Presentation

Recent advances in silicon-photonics-based sensors including latest capabilities and additions to ANELLO's ultra-low-loss silicon-nitride platform

Avi Feshali, Nathan Abrams

Proceedings Volume 13044, 1304405 (2024) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.3014076

KEYWORDS: Silicon nitride, Silicon photonics, Sensors, Gyroscopes, Silicon, Photonics, Heart, Design and modelling

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Proceedings Article | 13 March 2024 Presentation + Paper

Passive chip-scale resonant optical gyroscope with sub-20-deg/hour/√Hz performance

Adele Zawada, Warren Jin, Nathan Abrams, Avi Feshali, Mario Paniccia, Michel J. Digonnet

Proceedings Volume 12912, 129120F (2024) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.3012146

KEYWORDS: Gyroscopes

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Proceedings Article | 8 March 2023 Presentation + Paper

High-Q silicon nitride resonator gyroscope interrogated with broadband light

Adele Zawada, Avi Feshali, Warren Jin, Nathan Abrams, Mario Paniccia, Michel J. Digonnet

Proceedings Volume 12447, 124471D (2023) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2657332

KEYWORDS: Gyroscopes, Backscatter, Resonators, Relative intensity noise, Laser resonators, Fiber optic gyroscopes, Photons, Sagnac interferometers, Interference (communication), Waveguides

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Advancements in silicon photonics technology have resulted in significant progress toward tactical-grade chip-scale optical gyroscopes for applications such as inertial navigation for a range of self-driving vehicles. Our first generation of gyro, reported a year ago, was a resonant ring gyro fabricated with an ultra-low-loss silicon-nitride waveguide in a racetrack shape with a perimeter of 37 mm and a finesse of 1270. When the laser frequency was tuned to interrogate the resonance with the lowest backscattering coefficient, and balanced detection was implemented to reduce common noise in the two output signals, the angular random walk (ARW) was measured to be 80 deg/h/√Hz, and the gyro output was dominated by backscattering noise. The second-generation reported here utilizes a longer ring to further reduce backscattering noise. The ring resonator is a circular spiral with 33 turns, a length of 1.2 m, and a finesse of 29. When interrogated with a narrow-linewidth laser like the racetrack gyro, it has a measured ARW of 210 deg/h/√Hz dominated by laser-frequency noise. The ARW is higher than that of the racetrack gyro because the balanced detection was not as effective (13.2 dB of common noise rejection compared to 18 dB in the racetrack gyro). Tests in a vacuum indicate that environmental fluctuations do not contribute to the noise, and that most of the measured drift (3,500 deg/h) has an optical and/or electronic origin. We also report the noise performance of the racetrack gyro interrogated in a Sagnac interferometer probed with broadband light. This configuration was inspired by a recent publication from Shanghai Jiao Tong University that reports a resonant fiber optic gyroscope interrogated with broadband light with a measured ARW that meets tactical-grade requirements. The advantages of this interrogation technique are that it eliminates the need to stabilize the resonator, it reduces the component count, and by making use of incoherent light, it reduces the backscattering noise. The measured ARW of the racetrack gyro interrogated with broadband light was dominated by excess noise at large detected powers, and it was a factor of ~900 larger than the ARW of the same racetrack gyro interrogated with the laser. The reason for this increase in ARW is that the advantage of having a high-finesse resonator is lost when the ring is interrogated with broadband light, and the sensitivity is reduced by a factor of the finesse compared to the same ring resonator interrogated with a laser. This reduction in sensitivity is demonstrated experimentally. Achieving tactical-grade requirements will require returning to a laser interrogation, improving the balanced detection scheme to achieve a noise cancellation of 25 dB or better, and optimizing the laser linewidth to minimize both laser frequency noise and backscattering noise.

Proceedings Article | 3 March 2022 Presentation + Paper

Chip-scale gyroscope using silicon-nitride waveguide resonator with a Q factor of 100 million

Matthew Grant, Pierre-Baptiste Vigneron, Avi Feshali, Warren Jin, Nathan Abrams, Mario Paniccia, Michel Digonnet

Proceedings Volume 12016, 120160S (2022) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2617219

KEYWORDS: Backscatter, Gyroscopes, Resonators, Sensors, Waveguides, Laser resonators, Interference (communication), Modulation, Signal detection, Continuous wave operation

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Proceedings Article | 31 January 2020 Presentation + Paper

Design considerations for multi-chip module silicon-photonic transceivers

Nathan Abrams, Qixiang Cheng, Madeleine Glick, Evgeny Manzhosov, Moises Jezzini, Padraic Morrissey, Peter O'Brien, Keren Bergman

Proceedings Volume 11308, 113080I (2020) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2544008

KEYWORDS: Photonic integrated circuits, Transceivers, Silicon, Modulators, Waveguides, Silicon photonics, Prototyping, Capacitance, Data modeling, Interfaces

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Proceedings Article | 4 March 2019 Paper

Integrated photonics for NASA applications

Michael Krainak, Mark Stephen, Elisavet Troupaki, Sarah Tedder, Baraquiel Reyna, Jonathan Klamkin, Hongwei Zhao, Bowen Song, Joseph Fridlander, Minh Tran, John Bowers, Keren Bergman, Michal Lipson, Anthony Rizzo, Ipshita Datta, Nathan Abrams, Shayan Mookherjea, Seng-Tiong Ho, Qiang Bei, Yingyan Huang, Yongming Tu, Behzad Moslehi, James Harris, Andrey Matsko, Anatoliy Savchenkov, Guangyao Liu, Roberto Proietti, S. J. Yoo, Leif Johansson, Christophe Dorrer, Francisco Arteaga-Sierra, Jie Qiao, Songbin Gong, Tingyi Gu, Osgar John Ohanian, Xingjie Ni, Yimin Ding, Yao Duan, Hamed Dalir, Ray Chen, Volker Sorger, Tin Komljenovic

Proceedings Volume 10899, 108990F (2019) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2509808

KEYWORDS: Waveguides, Modulation, Silicon, Modulators, Photonic integrated circuits, Graphene, Oscillators, Integrated photonics, Integrated optics, Silicon photonics

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NASA is working with US industry and academia to develop Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs) for: (1) Sensors (2) Analog RF applications (3) Computing and free space communications. The PICs provide reduced size, weight, and power that is critical for space-based systems. We describe recent breakthrough 3D monolithic integration of photonic structures, particularly high-speed graphene-silicon devices on CMOS electronics to create CMOS-compatible highbandwidth transceivers for ultra-low power Terabit-scale optical communications. An integrated graphene electro-optic modulator has been demonstrated with a bandwidth of 30 GHz. Graphene microring modulators are especially attractive for dense wavelength division multiplexed (DWDM) systems. For space-based optical communication and ranging we have demonstrated generating a variable number of channels from a single laser using breadboard components, using a single-sideband carrier-suppressed (SSBCS) modulator driven by an externally-supplied RF tone (arbitrary RF frequency), a tunable optical bandpass filter, and an optical amplifier which are placed in a loop. We developed a Return--to-Zero (RZ) Differential Phase Shift Keying (DPSK) laser transmitter PIC using an InP technology platform that includes a tunable laser, a Semiconductor Optical Amplifier (SOA), high-speed Mach-Zehnder Modulator (MZM), and an electroabsorption (EAM) modulator. A Silicon Nitride (SiN) platform integrated photonic circuit suitable for a spectrally pure chip-scale tunable opto-electronic RF oscillator (OEO) that can operate as a flywheel in high precision optical clock modules, as well as radio astronomy, spectroscopy, and local oscillator in radar and communications systems is needed. We have demonstrated a low noise optical frequency combs generation from a small OEO prototypes containing very low loss (~1 dB) waveguide couplers of various shapes and sizes integrated with an ultrahigh-Q MgF2 resonators. An innovative miniaturized lab-on-a-chip device is being developed to directly monitor astronaut health during missions using ~3 drops of body fluid sample like blood, urine, and potentially other body fluids like saliva, sweat or tears. The first-generation system comprises a miniaturized biosensor based on PICs (including Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser – VCSEL, photodetector and optical filters and biochemical assay that generates a fluorescent optical signal change in response to the target analyte.

Showing 5 of 6 publications

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