The current state of programmable photonic integrated circuits is discussed, including recent developments in their building blocks, circuit architectures, electronic control and programming strategies, as well as different application spaces.
Multifunctional and diverse artificial neural systems can incorporate multimodal plasticity, memory and supervised learning functions to assist neuromorphic computation. In a new report, Jinran Yu and a research team in nanoenergy, nanoscience and materials science in China and the US., presented a bioinspired mechano-photonic artificial synapse with synergistic mechanical and optical plasticity. The team used an optoelectronic transistor made of graphene/molybdenum disulphide (MoS2) heterostructure and an integrated triboelectric nanogenerator to compose the artificial synapse. They controlled the charge transfer/exchange in the heterostructure with triboelectric potential and modulated the optoelectronic synapse behaviors readily, including postsynaptic photocurrents, photosensitivity and photoconductivity. The mechano-photonic artificial synapse is a promising implementation to mimic the complex biological nervous system and promote the development of interactive artificial intelligence. The work is now published on Science Advances.
What a nice surprise when we found out rather by chance that Nature Photonics chose the illustration for our article as cover picture. (For the article itself you can find a message further down here).
A photonic chip with no less than 128 tunable components proves to be a true computing "Swiss army knife" with a variety of applications. During her research on measuring light wavelengths using this photonic chip, Caterina Taballione of the University of Twente came across yet another application serendipitously—by sending single photons through the system instead of continuous light, the optical components can perform quantum operations, as well. The same chip works as a photonic quantum processor.
Photonics researchers report breakthrough in miniaturizing light-based chips.
A quantum-optical memristor is realized by means of a laser-written integrated photonic circuit. The memristive dynamics of the device is fully characterized. A memristor-based quantum reservoir computer is proposed as a possible application.
With this self-contained and comprehensive text, students will gain a detailed understanding of the fundamental concepts and major principles of photonics. Assuming only a basic background in optics, readers are guided through key topics such as the nature of optical fields, the properties of optical materials, and the principles of major photonic functions regarding the generation, propagation, coupling, interference, amplification, modulation, and detection of optical waves or signals. Numerous examples and problems are provided throughout to enhance understanding, and a solutions manual containing detailed solutions and explanations is available online for instructors. This is the ideal resource for electrical engineering and physics undergraduates taking introductory, single-semester or single-quarter courses in photonics, providing them with the knowledge and skills needed to progress to more advanced courses on photonic devices, systems and applications.
With the development of courses on materials synthesis and the need to carry out specific chemical transformations in the laboratory, good practical advice will be needed for those requiring more detail on conjugated materials synthesis. The purpose of this book is to give researchers and students an introduction and reference that efficiently provides general information for each important synthetic method category and a number of examples from the literature to convey practically important variations. It is useful as an outline for advanced organic and materials science courses as well as a good introduction and desk reference for new and experienced researchers in the field.
Prasanna Rangarajan currently serves as an Assistant Professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. He directs the activities of the Photonics Architecture Lab (PAL) within the Lyle School of Engineering.
Nonlinear Photonics and Novel Optical Phenomena contains contributed chapters from leading experts in nonlinear optics and photonics, and provides a comprehensive survey of fundamental concepts as well as hot topics in current research on nonlinear optical waves and related novel phenomena. The book covers self-accelerating airy beams, integrated photonics…
Traditional photonic crystals consist of periodic media with a pre-defined optical response. Here, the authors combine nanostructured back-gate insulators with a continuous layer of graphene to demonstrate an electrically tunable two-dimensional photonic crystal suitable for controlling the propagation of surface plasmon polaritons.
This textbook employs a pedagogical approach that facilitates access to the fundamentals of Quantum Photonics. It contains an introductory description of the quantum properties of photons through the second quantization of the electromagnetic field, introducing stimulated and spontaneous emission of photons at the quantum level. Schrödinger’s equation is used to describe the behavior of electrons in a one-dimensional potential. Tunneling through a barrier is used to introduce the concept of nonlocality of an electron at the quantum level, which is closely-related to quantum confinement tunneling, resonant tunneling, and the origin of energy bands in both periodic (crystalline) and aperiodic (non-crystalline) materials. Introducing the concepts of reciprocal space, Brillouin zones, and Bloch’s theorem, the determination of electronic band structure using the pseudopotential method is presented, allowing direct computation of the band structures of most group IV, group III-V, and group II-VI semiconductors. The text is supported by numerous numerical calculations that can be repeated by the student. The book includes an extensive treatment of the time duration of tunneling. The non-local nature of quantum mechanical states is further developed by the proof of Bell’s theorem and an in-depth discussion of its implications for experimental phenomena like quantum tunneling and quantum entanglement. The entangled quantum photon pair is the workhorse for exploring the fundamental non-locality of quantum mechanics, as well as important applications such as quantum cryptography. Further, the book presents the generation of entangled photon pairs by spontaneous parametric downconversion in detail using operators of the quantized photonic field. The physics of laser action is presented using the quantum photonic basis of spontaneous and stimulated emission, highlighting the limits of Maxwell’s equations in describing quantum behavior. Further, the book shows how the quantum confinement of electrons leads to reduced threshold current on the macroscopic level. Quantum cascade and interband cascade laser structures are analyzed using methods developed in earlier chapters to show how band structure engineering can be applied to access photon emission energies that cannot be achieved using conventional materials.
Multifunctional and diverse artificial neural systems can incorporate multimodal plasticity, memory and supervised learning functions to assist neuromorphic computation. In a new report, Jinran Yu and a research team in nanoenergy, nanoscience and materials science in China and the US., presented a bioinspired mechano-photonic artificial synapse with synergistic mechanical and optical plasticity. The team used an optoelectronic transistor made of graphene/molybdenum disulphide (MoS2) heterostructure and an integrated triboelectric nanogenerator to compose the artificial synapse. They controlled the charge transfer/exchange in the heterostructure with triboelectric potential and modulated the optoelectronic synapse behaviors readily, including postsynaptic photocurrents, photosensitivity and photoconductivity. The mechano-photonic artificial synapse is a promising implementation to mimic the complex biological nervous system and promote the development of interactive artificial intelligence. The work is now published on Science Advances.
When you see light, you’re looking at photons spat out by an excited atom. But what if instead of light, an excited atom released a wave of matter?
Advanced photonic nanostructures are well on their way to revolutionising quantum technology for quantum networks based on light. Researchers have now developed the first building blocks needed to construct complex quantum photonic circuits for quantum networks.
Optical Computing or Photonic Computing is a computing concept that uses photons for digital information processing while conventional computers uses electrons.
Researchers demonstrate the bottom-up synthesis of InGaN nanowire photonic crystals with precisely controlled size, spacing, and morphology, which can serve as the fundamental building blocks of a new generation of photonic crystal devices and systems.
This Second Edition of "Photonic Signal Processing" updates most recent R&D on processing techniques of signals in photonic domain from the fundamentals given in its first edition. Several modern techniques in Photonic Signal Processing (PSP) are described: Graphical signal flow technique to simplify the analysis of the photonic transfer functions, plus its insights into the physical phenomena of such processors. The resonance and interference of optical fields are presented by the poles and zeros of the optical circuits, respectively.Detailed design procedures for fixed and tunable optical filters. These filters, "brick-wall-like", now play a highly important role in ultra-broadband (100GBaud) to spectral shaping of sinc temporal response so as to generate truly Nyquist sampler of the received eye diagrams3-D PSP allows multi-dimensional processing for highly complex optical signalsPhotonic differentiators and integrators for dark soliton generations.Optical dispersion compensating processors for ultra-long haul optical transmission systems.Some optical devices essentials for PSP.Many detailed PSP techniques are given in the chapters of this Second Edition.
Spiking neural networks (SNNs) utilize brain-like spatiotemporal spike encoding for simulating brain functions. Photonic SNN offers an ultrahigh speed and power efficiency platform for implementing high-performance neuromorphic computing. Here, we proposed a multi-synaptic photonic SNN, combining the modified remote supervised learning with delay-weight co-training to achieve pattern classification. The impact of multi-synaptic connections and the robustness of the network were investigated through numerical simulations. In addition, the collaborative computing of algorithm and hardware was demonstrated based on a fabricated integrated distributed feedback laser with a saturable absorber (DFB-SA), where 10 different noisy digital patterns were successfully classified. A functional photonic SNN that far exceeds the scale limit of hardware integration was achieved based on time-division multiplexing, demonstrating the capability of hardware-algorithm co-computation.
Photonics Solution Manual. GitHub Gist: instantly share code, notes, and snippets.
With the help of electronic microscopy, scientists have tracked defects in the surface of two-dimensional photonic crystals. But there are difficulties with bulk photonic crystals. There is no way for scientists to research the interiors of these unusual crystals. So scientists have been searching for a method to better measure these crystals for some time.
When John Crocker, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering in the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Engineering and Applied Science was a graduate student, his advisor gathered toget
Article 2 of our Integrated Photonics series: Integrated Photonics is enabling innovation in a broad and expanding list of applications.
We are at the crossroads of a new epoch: the age of electronics is being replaced by the age of photonics. This book will introduce you to the fascinating development of photonics, avoiding complicated technical terminology and instead explaining the physical fundamentals in a clear way. Based on this, important developments such as the laser and its applications in industry, research and everyday life are described. Complicated physical properties and technical details are explained to the reader in an understandable way. The authors: Dr. Patrick Steglich is lecturer for photonics and optical technologies at the Technical University of Applied Sciences Wildau and scientist at the Leibniz Institute for Innovative Microelectronics IHP in Frankfurt (Oder). Katja Heise works as an editor in Berlin. As a trained political scientist and journalist, she specializes in translating complex technical topics into simple language. The authors live together with their son and two daughters in Berlin. This Springer essential is a translation of the original German 1st edition essentials, Photonik einfach erklärt by Steglich Patrick and Katja Heise, published by Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature in 2019.The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation. Springer Nature works continuously to further the development of tools for the production of books and on the related technologies to support the authors.
Lidar is a critical method by which robots and autonomous vehicles sense the world around them, but the lasers and sensors generally take up a considerable amount of space. Not so with Voyant Photonics, which has created a lidar system that you really could conceivably balance on the head of a pin.
Nonlinear Photonics and Novel Optical Phenomena contains contributed chapters from leading experts in nonlinear optics and photonics, and provides a comprehensive survey of fundamental concepts as well as hot topics in current research on nonlinear optical waves and related novel phenomena. The book covers self-accelerating airy beams, integrated photonics…
Transmitting information over optical fibers requires a high degree of signal integrity due to noise levels existing in optical systems. Proper methods and techniques for noise evaluations are critical in achieving high-performance. This book provides a fundamental understanding of noise generation processes in optical communications and photonic signals. It discusses techniques for noise evaluation in optical communication systems, especially digital optical systems, as well as transmission systems performance and noise impacts in photonic processing systems
