Hybrid Barium Titanate Waveguide Designs For Efficient Nonlinear Frequency Conversion

Abstract

Barium titanate (BaTiO$_3$) is emerging as a powerful integrated photonic material, combining strong $X^{(2)}$ and electro-optic nonlinearities with rapidly improving thin-film waveguide quality. Recent demonstrations of low-loss BaTiO$_3$ waveguides and high-Q resonators have established BaTiO$_3$-on-insulator as a promising platform for next-generation frequency-conversion and quantum photonic technologies. However, while BaTiO$_3$ electro-optic modulators are now well developed, nonlinear BaTiO$_3$ waveguide engineering remains comparatively immature. Techniques widely used in lithium niobate, such as periodic poling for quasi-phase-matching, are poorly suited to BaTiO$_3$ because epitaxial thin films exhibit high coercive fields, strong strain-clamping effects, multivariant domain structures, and slow, complex switching dynamics. These factors make accurate periodic poling challenging and hinder the development of efficient $X^{(2)}$ frequency converters. Here, we introduce a fabrication-robust alternative based on linear-nonlinear hybrid waveguides, where TiO$_2$ is selectively incorporated into BaTiO$_3$ ridge waveguides to enhance nonlinear mode overlap while relying solely on modal phase-matching. Using coupled-mode-theory simulations, we identify phase-matched geometries and show that the hybrid design achieves a 2.75x increase in normalized second harmonic generation efficiency over monolithic BaTiO$_3$ waveguides. The uniform, lithographically defined cross-section makes the approach highly scalable. These results position hybrid BaTiO$_3$-TiO$_2$ waveguides as a practical route to CMOS-compatible, high-efficiency $X^{(2)}$ devices for integrated quantum photonics.