Design of X-Cut and Z-Cut Lithium Niobate Whispering-Gallery-Mode Disk-Resonators With High Quality Factors

We demonstrate the fabrication process of millimeter-size lithium niobate (LiNbO3) whispering-gallery-mode (WGM) disk-resonators. We fabricate both x-and z-cut disk-resonators, starting from commercially available LiNbO3 disks with diameters of 12 mm and thicknesses of 1 mm. We characterize these two WGM resonators using a prism coupling configuration. We find that both resonators feature high loaded quality factors, in both cases higher than 10(7) at 1550 nm. We also investigate the polarization and thermal effects in these disk-resonators. The design of high-Q LiNbO3 disk-resonators with different orientations using the same platform will allow for a wide variety of potential applications in nonlinear and quantum photonics.