Erbium-doped fiber amplifiers revolutionized long-haul optical communications and laser technology. Erbium ions could provide a basis for efficient optical amplification in photonic integrated circuits but their use remains impractical as a result of insufficient output power. We demonstrate a photonic integrated circuit–based erbium amplifier reaching 145 milliwatts of output power and more than 30 decibels of small-signal gain—on par with commercial fiber amplifiers and surpassing state-of-the-art III-V heterogeneously integrated semiconductor amplifiers. We apply ion implantation to ultralow–loss silicon nitride (Si 3 N 4 ) photonic integrated circuits, which are able to increase the soliton microcomb output power by 100 times, achieving power requirements for low-noise photonic microwave generation and wavelength-division multiplexing optical communications. Endowing Si 3 N 4 photonic integrated circuits with gain enables the miniaturization of various fiber-based devices such as high–pulse-energy femtosecond mode-locked lasers.

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基于光子集成电路的掺铒放大器

掺铒光纤放大器彻底改变了长距离光通信和激光技术。铒离子可以为光子集成电路中的有效光放大提供基础，但由于输出功率不足，它们的使用仍然不切实际。我们展示了一种基于光子集成电路的铒放大器，其输出功率达到 145 毫瓦，小信号增益超过 30 分贝，与商用光纤放大器相当，并超越了最先进的 III-V 异质集成半导体放大器。我们将离子注入应用于超低损耗氮化硅（Si3ñ4)光子集成电路，能够将孤子微梳输出功率提高100倍，实现低噪声光子微波产生和波分复用光通信的功率要求。赋予硅3ñ4具有增益的光子集成电路能够实现各种基于光纤的设备的小型化，例如高脉冲能量飞秒锁模激光器。