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 $1.5\times {10}^6$, corresponding to a propagation loss $\sim 0.4\mathrm{dB}/\mathrm{cm}$. 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.