Low loss (Al)GaAs on an insulator waveguide platform

In this Letter, we demonstrate a low loss gallium arsenide and aluminum gallium arsenide on an insulator platform by heterogenous integration. The resonators on this platform exhibit record high quality factors up to 1.5 × 106, corresponding to a propagation loss ∼0.4 dB∕cm. For the first time, to the best of our knowledge, the loss of integrated III–V semiconductor on insulator waveguides becomes comparable with that of the silicon-on-insulator waveguides. This Letter should have a significant impact on photonic integrated circuits (PICs) and become an essential building block for the evolving nonlinear PICs and integrated quantum photonic systems in the future.