Sub-kilohertz intrinsic linewidth stimulated Brillouin laser in integrated lithium niobate microresonators

The rapid advancement of lithium niobate on insulator (LNOI) photonics has spurred interest in approaches to develop ultra-narrow linewidth Brillouin microlasers. Here we demonstrate an integrated Brillouin microlaser with 118-Hz intrinsic linewidth and 3.15-mW threshold power in a dispersion engineered and suspended LNOI microdisk resonator of 116 um diameter. Benefited from the ultrahigh Q factor and sub-millimeter-scale microresonator, large Brillouin gain is attained via the backward intermodal SBS between the dual-resonant optical WGMs with a 10-GHz whispering-gallery mechanical mode, while satisfying the requirements of both energy and momentum conservations. Such strong optomechanical coupling up to 12.1 kHz is promising for a record narrow linewidth and a lowest stimulated Brillouin laser threshold value within sub-millimeter-scale integrated microresonators reported so far. This advancement in integrated ultra-narrow linewidth Brillouin lasers with compact cavity lengths paves the way for applications ranging from coherent information processing to precision metrology within the realm of high density photonic integration.