Title: Ultrafast Nonlinear Nanophotonics: From Superior Components to Advanced Circuits
Abstract: Ultrafast sciences and technologies are founded on the principles of ultrashort-pulse nonlinear optics. Until now, their discrete and bulky nature has hindered the utilization of their vast functionalities for many applications, ranging from sensing to computing and quantum information processing. In the past few years, nanophotonic lithium niobate (LN) has emerged as one of the most promising platforms for integrated photonics, characterized by strong quadratic nonlinearity. In this talk, I will present recent experimental progress in the realization and utilization of ultrafast nonlinear devices in nanophotonic LN, which outperform their table-top counterparts. These advancements include intense optical parametric amplification [1], ultrafast ultra-low-energy all-optical switching [2], few-cycle vacuum squeezing [3], ultrafast laser mode-locking [4], and ultrabroadband coherent light sources [5, 6]. I will also discuss ongoing efforts toward the miniaturization of ultrafast technologies and the development of chip-scale ultrafast nanophotonic circuits in both the classical and quantum regimes.
References
[1] L. Ledezma, R. Sekine, Q. Guo, R. Nehra, S. Jahani, A. Marandi, “Intense optical parametric amplification in dispersion engineered nanophotonic lithium niobate waveguides,” Optica 9 (3), 303-308 (2022).
[2] Q. Guo, R. Sekine, L. Ledezma, R. Nehra, D. J. Dean, A. Roy, R. M. Gray, S. Jahani, A. Marandi, “Femtojoule femtosecond all-optical switching in lithium niobate nanophotonics,” Nature Photonics 16, 625–631 (2022).
[3] R. Nehra, R. Sekine, L. Ledezma, Q. Guo, R. M. Gray, A. Roy, A. Marandi, “Few-cycle vacuum squeezing in nanophotonics,” Science 377, 1333–1337 (2022).
[4] Q. Guo, B. K. Gutierrez, R. Sekine, R. M. Gray, J. A. Williams, L. Ledezma, L. Costa, A. Roy, S. Zhou, M. Liu, A. Marandi, “Ultrafast mode-locked laser in nanophotonic lithium niobate,” Science 382, 708-713 (2023).
[5] A. Roy, L. Ledezma, L. Costa, R. Gray, R. Sekine, Q. Guo, M. Liu, R. M. Briggs, A. Marandi, “Visible-to-mid-IR tunable frequency comb in nanophotonics,” Nature Communications 14 (1), 6549 (2023).
[6] R. Sekine, R. M. Gray, L. Ledezma, S. Zhou, Q. Guo, A. Marandi, “Multi-octave frequency comb from an ultra-low-threshold nanophotonic parametric oscillator,” (arXiv:2309.04545).
About the Speaker: Alireza Marandi is an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics at Caltech. He received his PhD from Stanford University in 2013. Before joining Caltech, he held positions as a postdoctoral scholar and a research engineer at Stanford, a visiting scientist at the National Institute of Informatics in Japan, and a senior engineer in the Advanced Technology Group of Dolby Laboratories. Marandi is a Senior Member of OSA and IEEE and has been the recipient of NSF CAREER award, AFOSR YIP award, ARO Early Career Award, DARPA Young Faculty Award, and the Young Scientist Prize of the IUPAP. He is named the 2019 KNI-Wheatley Scholar and a 2023 Sloan Foundation Fellow.
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