Past Seminars

Effective tooling is essential for rapid innovation, yet traditional Electronic Design Automation (EDA) often hinders progress in emerging fields like photonics and quantum computing. Our extensive experience at leading institutions such as Google, PsiQuantum, HP, Juniper Networks, and Rockley Photonics revealed that commercial tools frequently fall short due to misaligned incentives. To address this gap, we developed open-source solutions, notably GDSFactory, which enable researchers and practitioners to directly participate in shaping the future of the tool. Though these tools served us well in our own day jobs, we came to the conclusion that an open-core business would be necessary to support these tools in the long term and make them a viable commercial alternative. This talk highlights our journey, key achievements, and future directions in advancing photonics and quantum technologies.

Troy is an experienced engineer in the field of design automation. He graduated MIT in 2010 and worked for 5 years at Samsung Electro-Mechanics on the simulation and optimization of novel fluid dynamic bearings, a topic on which he holds multiple patents. Since then, he has pivoted his focus to photonics. He has spent over 10 years streamlining the development cycle for photonics-based transceivers, wearable sensors, and more, at companies such as Aurrion, Juniper Networks, and Rockley Photonics. Recently he has founded DoPlayDo, Inc., which aims to accelerate the development of advanced integrated circuits using open source tools, such as GDSFactory. He is based in Fujieda, Japan.

Quantum information processing (QIP) relies on high-fidelity quantum state preparation and precise unitary operations; however, practical realizations face major challenges, as the permissible error per operation must remain below the fault-tolerant threshold, typically on the order of 10−3 to 10−2 in most quantum systems. Integrated photonic circuits are a leading platform for scalable QIP technologies, yet unavoidable fabrication imperfections and control inaccuracies often limit operational fidelities, preventing the realization of large-scale quantum circuits. Even small systematic errors can degrade fidelity below the fault-tolerant threshold. A powerful approach for mitigating such errors is the composite segmentation method, originally inspired by techniques from nuclear magnetic resonance, where operations are carefully divided into segments with tailored parameters to enhance robustness. However, traditional composite techniques rely on complex-valued parameter control, whereas integrated photonic systems inherently support only real-valued parameters, making direct application of these methods not just challenging but fundamentally infeasible without new design strategies. In this talk, I will present the detuning-modulated composite segmentation method recently developed in my lab, which enables robust quantum operations in integrated photonic platforms without requiring complex phase control. This approach corrects a wide range of errors and achieves fidelities surpassing the fault-tolerant threshold. I will share our recent numerical and experimental results demonstrating how detuning-modulated composite segmentation dramatically enhances error tolerance and achieves superior robustness in single-photon quantum gates, such as high-fidelity Hadamard gates, as well as in two-photon entangling gates within integrated quantum circuits. Our approach opens a new path toward scalable and fault-tolerant quantum integrated photonic technologies.

Haim Suchowski is a professor in the Department of Condensed Matter Physics at the School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel Aviv University. He completed his postdoctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley (2014) after earning his M.Sc. and Ph.D. at the Weizmann Institute of Science (2011). He holds a B.A. in Physics (2004) and a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering (2004), both from Tel Aviv University. His research focuses on ultrafast dynamics in condensed matter systems and nanostructures, silicon photonics, and two-dimensional materials. His group also investigates quantum coherent control using ultrashort laser pulses, as well as novel control schemes in quantum integrated photonics and nonlinear optics. In addition to leading a vibrant research group, he actively collaborates with international partners at the interface of ultrafast photonics and quantum technologies. Prof. Suchowski holds more than 20 patents and is the co-founder of 3DOptix, a cloud-based optical simulation platform, as well as two stealth companies: Quantum Pulse, focused on robust integrated quantum photonics, and a second venture developing mid-infrared imaging in silicon via robust nonlinear upconversion. He is the recipient of several awards, including the Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellowship, the Alon Young Investigator Award, and an ERC grant for his project "MIRAGE 20-15".

Superluminal lasers (SLLs) have garnered significant attention over the past decade due to their potential to revolutionize precision measurements and metrology. These lasers operate under conditions where the group velocity exceeds the speed of light in vacuum. In this regime, the laser's spectral sensitivity to changes in the ambient parameters becomes significantly higher than that of conventional lasers, making SLLs highly attractive for various sensing applications, including gravitational wave detection, dark matter search, and navigation-grade rotation sensing. In this talk, I will first show different approaches we have developed to realize the gain and dispersion properties for superluminal lasers based on non-linear interaction of light with hot Rb atoms. Next, I will present how the implementation of this interaction within an optical cavity, and inducing lasing under such unique conditions, enhances the spectral sensitivity of the laser to perturbation, making it a promising candidate for ultrasensitive optical sensing. Finally, I will introduce a novel concept for the superluminal laser cavity design incorporating polarization-selective reflectors, which enable efficient coupling of the interaction beams into the cavity while minimizing losses for the lasing mode.

Yael Sternfeld obtained her BSc and MSc degrees in Physics from Tel Aviv University. Since 2021, she has been working on her PhD under the supervision of Prof Jacob Scheuer and collaborating closely with Prof Selim Shahriar from Northwestern University. Yael has been awarded the prestigious Rothschild fellowship for post-doctoral studies. She also received an excellent research prize from the physics department at Tel Aviv University, and she won the Electro-Optics fund competition of the physical electronic department for best master's thesis.

Dennis Gabor’s first demonstration of holography in 1948 stimulated the development of fielded analog optical computers within a decade. Yet today — despite order-of-magnitude improvements in computational power and wavefront modulation capability — practical holography remain elusive, often overshadowed by stagecraft illusions like Pepper’s Ghost. This talk will explore the discrepancy by providing a perspective on the past, present, and future of programmable free-space optics. Using our recent development of high-speed spatial light modulators and the open-source software that it inspired as examples, I will argue that hardware/software co-design is required to overcome holography’s significant technical challenges. The resulting roadmap paves the way towards impactful applications across computing, communications, and fundamental science that will leverage these advances while, reciprocally, inspiring the next generation of software-defined optics.

Chris is a Naval cryptologist seeking to solve complex national security issues. He is a 2022 graduate from MIT’s Quantum Photonics and AI Group, where he developed gigahertz-rate spatial light modulators, open-source holography software, and a new class of wavelength-scale optical sensors operating at their fundamental thermal noise limits. As a founding member of the slmsuite development team, his current research focuses on accessible, high-performance computational holography algorithms for applications ranging from brain imaging to quantum science. His work has received various recognitions to include the Hertz Foundation Fellowship, the APS Carl E. Anderson Award, and MIT’s Jin Au Kong PhD Thesis Award in EECS.

Accurately predicting surface topography evolution during semiconductor processing is essential for advanced device manufacturing and Process/Design Technology Co-Optimization (DTCO). DTCO bridges semiconductor process development and circuit design, ensuring that manufacturing constraints, device performance, and power efficiency are optimized together. By integrating insights from process modeling into early design stages, DTCO helps enhance yield, reduce costs, and enable continued scaling of semiconductor devices. Feature-scale modeling plays a central role in this effort, as it connects reactor-scale process conditions, such as ion and neutral fluxes and their distributions, to the resulting material modifications at the nanoscale. In this talk, we present ViennaPS, a flexible and efficient framework for simulating topography evolution during etching and deposition, enabling predictive process design and optimization. To improve model accuracy, ViennaPS incorporates atomistic-scale insights (DFT/MD), which help characterize fundamental surface reactions, such as adsorption, desorption, and sputtering. These reaction mechanisms, in turn, define surface evolution models used in feature-scale simulations. Chamber-scale plasma simulations provide spatially resolved flux distributions of reactive species, ensuring that feature-scale models reflect the local process conditions imposed by reactor design and operating parameters. Beyond physics-based modeling, we explore the automated extraction and optimization of model parameters from SEM/TEM images, where experimental feature profiles guide the refinement of topography models, reaction rates, and material-specific properties. Additionally, equipment-scale surrogate models can be integrated into ViennaPS to incorporate realistic plasma reactor effects while maintaining computational efficiency. This multi-scale approach allows for rapid process tuning and improves the predictive power of semiconductor process simulations. By combining first-principles insights, chamber-scale process inputs, and automated model calibration, ViennaPS provides a powerful and versatile framework for semiconductor topography evolution modeling. We demonstrate its capabilities through case studies, showcasing how this integrated approach improves process control, reduces reliance on empirical fitting, and accelerates technology development.

Dr. Lado Filipovic is an Associate Professor and Director of the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Multi-Scale Process Modeling at TU Wien’s Institute for Microelectronics in Vienna, Austria. He earned his PhD degree in Microelectronics from TU Wien and specializes in semiconductor sensor technology and process simulations. His research focuses on multi-scale process modeling, integrated sensors, and novel semiconductor materials, with an emphasis on equipment-informed inverse design and advanced semiconductor fabrication. Dr. Filipovic leads multiple research projects aimed at enhancing process simulations, improving device performance, and advancing sensor integration. His team has developed open-source TCAD tools, including ViennaPS, which is widely used for process and device modeling. A Senior Member of IEEE, he collaborates with leading industry partners and academic institutions worldwide to advance semiconductor processes, devices, and manufacturing technologies through improved modeling and simulation.

Density-Functional Theory (DFT) has seen tremendous improvements in the accuracy of its implementations since its first inception. The theory is characterized by the Nobel Prize-winning insight that the number density of electrons uniquely determines the ground-state properties of a system of atoms without the need to evaluate the many-body wavefunction for the electrons. In this talk, I will discuss another key insight that when coupled to DFT, leads to exceptionally accurate predictions from first principles. The insight is that the Fermi level (the electronic chemical potential) behaves in some cases as a manifestly local quantity rather than as uniform throughout a crystal sample, an assumption commonly employed in materials computations. This insight can be used to accurately predict the measured values of electric fields probed using color centers in diamond with the aim of improving the functioning of semiconductor devices. The insight can also be used to accurately determine timescales for charge-state decay of ionized color centers in diamond with applications in quantum computation, quantum communication, and quantum sensing.

Rodrick Kuate Defo is an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Syracuse University. Prior to his current position, he was a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a Visiting Faculty Fellow in the McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning at Princeton University. He completed his PhD in physics with a secondary field in computational science and engineering at Harvard University and earned his bachelor's degree in math and physics from McGill University.

Fiber optical networks have been widely deployed at different scales to form the core infrastructure of today’s Internet backbone, telecommunication networks, and smart connected communities. These networks can deliver high bandwidth data services at deterministic low latency leveraging advanced techniques and hardware such as wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) technique and reconfigurable add-drop multiplexer (ROADM) units. Accurate modeling and performance estimation, as well as autonomous adaption and reconfiguration of optical links are essential for optical system designs, particularly due to wavelength-dependent gain spectrum of optical amplifiers and fiber nonlinearity. Moreover, each fiber-optic cable can also serve as a high-resolution sensor since it is sensitive to different environmental effects (e.g., vibration and temperature) due to the linear and nonlinear light scattering. In this talk, I will first present the modeling of erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) using machine learning (ML) and its application in signal quality estimation in multi-span ROADM systems. I will then present our investigation on the coexistence of heterogeneous communication, fiber sensing, and radio-over-fiber signals that co-propagate on the same fiber, focusing on their impact on key performance metrics including bit error rate (BER) and sensing resolution. Lastly, I will highlight a series of measurements and field trials that support our research, conducted on the PAWR COSMOS platform in Manhattan, NYC, and the Duke BlueFrog testbed in the Research Triangle, NC.

Tingjun Chen received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University in 2020, and the B.Eng. degree in Electronic Engineering from Tsinghua University in 2014. Between 2020–2021 he was a Postdoctoral Associate at Yale University. Since Fall 2021 he has been with Duke University where he is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science (secondary appointment). His research interests are in the area of networking and communications with a specific focus on next-generation wireless, optical, mobile networks, as well as Internet-of-Things (IoT) systems. Tingjun received the IBM Academic Award, the Google Research Scholar Award, the Columbia Engineering Morton B. Friedman Memorial Prize for Excellence, the Columbia University Eli Jury Award, and the Facebook Fellowship. He is also a co-recipient of several paper awards, including the ACM CoNEXT’16 Best Paper Award, ECOC’23 Best Paper Award, and Top-Scored Papers from OFC’23 and OFC’24. His Ph.D. thesis received the ACM SIGMOBILE Dissertation Award Runner-up.

Imagine machines that can see beyond human limitations—drones locating hidden survivors, cameras predicting structural failures, or medical devices detecting tumors beneath the skin. Traditional vision systems are constrained by the boundaries of human perception, missing vast information present in light interactions. This talk explores the development of advanced vision systems that capture underutilized dimensions of light, model intricate light-scene interactions, and extract hidden 3D information—around corners, beneath surfaces, and at high speeds. By jointly developing novel imaging hardware, efficient rendering models, and physics-based learning algorithms, we aim to transcend conventional vision capabilities—unlocking critical applications in autonomous navigation, structural monitoring, and non-invasive medical imaging.

Akshat Dave is a Postdoctoral Associate at MIT Media Lab in the Camera Culture group working with Prof. Ramesh Raskar. He received his Ph.D. from Rice University ECE Department in 2023 where he was advised by Prof. Ashok Veeraraghavan. His research lies at the intersection of applied optics, computer graphics, and computer vision. His research focuses on developing vision systems that go beyond human perception. His work has been recognized by Rice University's Best Thesis Award, OSA Best Paper Prize, and fellowships by Texas Instruments and Qualcomm.

Abstract: Recently, exploring chiral and topological effects in integrated photonic circuits has gained prominence and enabled many novel direction-dependant and robust controls over light-matter interaction in classical and quantum domains. In this talk, I will present some of the key insights from our recent invited perspectives on integrated topological photonics [1] and chiral quantum optics [2], discussing the latest developments and future opportunities in quantum-emitter-integrated nanophotonics platforms, particularly beyond the single/few particle limit. Next, I will present our latest works on demonstrations of the first topological frequency combs [3] and the first on-chip two-timescale mode-locking in lattices of 100s of coupled SiN ring resonators. Moreover, I will also present our demonstration of a subwavelength optical lattice in a 2D-material-integrated plasmonic lattice platform using a novel “non-local” pump-probe spectroscopy method and will discuss its advantages for addressing pump-noise rejection and thermal management compared to conventional pump-probe schemes [4]. References: [1] Phys. Rev. A 108, 040101 (2023) [2] arXiv:2411.06495 (2024) [3] Science 384 (6702), 1356-1361 (2024) [4] arXiv:2406.00464 (2024)

Bio Dr. Mahmoud Jalali Mehrabad received his PhD in quantum optics as a University Prize Scholarship Fellow from the University of Sheffield, UK, in 2021, under the supervision of Profs. Maurice Skolnick, Mark Fox, and Luke Wilson. His PhD was focused on developing semiconductor topological quantum photonic integrated circuits, for the generation, transfer, and manipulation of light at the single photon limit on-chip, for which he was awarded the UK’s Rank Prize Award in 2021. He joined the Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland in 2022 to work in Prof. Hafezi's Lab. His postdoc work is focused on the generation and manipulation of a new class of optical frequency combs on topological silicon nitride, on-chip chiral quantum optics with solid-state quantum emitters, and 2D-materials-integrated plasmonics.

Visible-light integrated lasers and photonics will enable compact, reliable quantum and atomic experiments. Integration also has the potential to bring about improved performance and scalability as well as new functionality for quantum sensing, computation, clocks, and metrology. We discuss progress in ultra-low-loss silicon nitride integration for precision lasers, modulators, and other atomic and quantum related photonics and quantum and atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) physics functions. We also discuss progress towards integration of experiments and applications with cold neutral atoms and trapped ions.

Dr. Blumenthal is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UCSB, Director of the Terabit Optical Ethernet Center and heads the Optical Communications and Photonics Integration group. He is Co-Founder of Calient Networks, Packet Photonics, and SiNoptiq. He holds 23 patents and has published over 535 papers in the areas of optical communications, optical packet switching, ultra-low loss silicon nitride waveguides, integrated ultra-stable ultra-narrow linewidth lasers, integrated atom and quantum photonics, optical gyro sensors, indium phosphide photonic integrated circuits, and microwave photonics. He is co-author of Tunable Laser Diodes and Related Optical Sources (New York: IEEE–Wiley, 2005). Dr. Blumenthal is the 2020 recipient of the Optica Society C. E. K. Mees Medal, a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), Fellow of the IEEE and Fellow of the Optica Society. He is recipient of a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, a National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award and an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program Award. Blumenthal received the Ph.D. degree from the University of Colorado, Boulder (1993), the M.S.E.E. from Columbia University (1988) and the B.S.E.E from the University of Rochester (1981).

In this talk I will discuss two of our latest works. On the one hand, many quantum network applications rely on the availability of high-quality entanglement distributed among distant parties. Entanglement buffers are designed to store high-quality entanglement, ensuring it is readily available for consumption when needed. Our work establishes a systematic framework for the study and design of entanglement buffers [1]. We introduce two fundamental metrics for evaluating the performance of an entanglement buffer: the probability that entanglement is available at any given time and the average entanglement quality upon consumption. We then investigate a bipartite system, where each party possesses one memory for long-term entanglement storage and multiple memories for entanglement generation. An important finding is that maximising entanglement quality upon consumption requires frequent purification, even if this process often fails and results in the loss of high-quality buffered entanglement. On the other hand, distributing quantum states reliably among distant locations is a key challenge in quantum networks. One-way quantum networks address this by using one-way communication and quantum error correction. We propose and analyze quantum circuit switching as a protocol to distribute quantum states in one-way quantum networks [2]. Using tools from queuing theory, we show that frequency multiplexing increases the rate at which quantum states are delivered, but it decreases the number of users supported by the network. We also show that using a large number of repeaters to combat channel losses limits the maximum distance between users, as each repeater introduces additional processing delays. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.10052 [2] https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.19049

Álvaro is a senior Casimir PhD candidate in Prof. Wehner’s group at TU Delft (the Netherlands). His work focuses on the design and performance analysis of protocols for entanglement distribution in quantum networks. Some of his recent works include the design of an entanglement buffering system and the proposal of a circuit switching protocol for delivering entanglement in multi-user large-scale networks. More broadly, Álvaro is interested in probability theory, algorithms, and mathematical puzzles. He is also the director of the yearly tech fair NoveldaTech (Spain).

Photons can interact with a wide variety of quantum systems and their ability to more easily preserve their coherence makes them ideal candidates for transmitting information between remote quantum information processors. Photonic integrated circuits (PICs), which can be manufactured with modern semiconductor fabrication, provide a platform in which such interactions can occur at scale. Implementing integrated devices enabling these interactions within programmable and scalable settings while preserving a sufficient amount of strength continues to be a general goal in quantum photonics. Here, we implement device designs and architectures that improve current limits on the programmability and scalability of three types of optical interactions. More specifically, we explore the use of programmable multimode interference as a means for unitary transformations onto a set of optical spatial modes, optical resonators for high-extinction coherent modulators driven by RF signals, and large-scale silicon photonics for interacting with hybrid integrated quantum dot emitters.

Hugo Larocque received his B.Sc. in Physics from the University of Ottawa in 2016. He then earned his M.Sc. in Physics in 2018 from the same institution. In the same year, he started doctoral studies in electrical engineering at MIT, where he currently is a research assistant in the Research Laboratory of Electronics. Hugo’s research focuses on semiconductor devices and systems for telecommunications and quantum information processing that explore new types of interactions between entities ranging from optical fields to solid-state quantum emitters. His past work involved optical and matter wave shaping within the contexts of nonlinear, singular, and quantum optics.

I will introduce the quantum algorithms to estimate the quantum Fisher information and prepare the optimal quantum states to maximize the quantum Fisher information, which can be implemented on the noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices. This talk is based on the following references: [1] Jacob L. Beckey, M. Cerezo, Akira Sone, and Patrick J. Coles, Phys. Rev. Research 4, 013083 (2022) [2] M. Cerezo, Akira Sone, Jacob L. Beckey, and Patrick J. Coles, Quantum Sci. Technol. 6 035008 (2021) [3] Akira Sone, M. Cerezo, Jacob L. Beckey, and Patrick J Coles, Phys. Rev. A 104, 062602 (2021)

Akira Sone earned his Ph.D. in Quantum Engineering from MIT at 2019 under the supervision of Prof. Paola Cappellaro. He was a postdoctoral research associate in the Theoretical Division at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, working on the near-term quantum algorithms under the supervision of Dr. Patrick Coles from 2019 to 2021. After working as a research software engineer at the Aliro Technologies, Inc under the supervision of Prof. Prineha Narang from 2021 to 2022, he is currently an assistant professor of physics at University of Massachusetts Boston, working on the quantum machine learning, quantum sensing and quantum thermodynamics.

Traditional approaches to quantum optics are rooted in the reciprocal, frequency-momentum space. In this talk, I will discuss recent advances toward sub-cycle quantum optics, where, instead, quantum fields are accessed in a localized region of space-time [1-2]. Both regimes will be compared side-by-side to contrast the advantages of each approach, with a particular emphasis on quantum sensing proposals [3-5] in the mid-infrared frequency range. In the concluding part of the talk, I will summarize recent advances in producing few-cycle bright one- and two-mode squeezed vacuum states in a single few-cycle spatio-temporal mode with macroscopic photon occupation [6]. Such capabilities are poised to unlock a new era of (extreme) nonlinear quantum optics in the attosecond [7] regime. [1] C. Riek et al.; Science 350, 420-423 (2015) [2] I-C. Benea-Chelmus et al.; Nature 568, 202-206 (2019) [3] S. Virally, P. Cusson, DVS; Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 270504 (2021) [4] S. Gündoğdu et al; Laser Phot. Rev. 17, 2200706 (2023) [5] S. Onoe, S. Virally, DVS; arXiv:2307.13088 (2023) [6] P. Cusson, S. Virally, DVS; IRMMW-THz Conference, paper Th-PM2-5-7 (2023) [7] 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics: Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L'Huillier. Experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses for studying electron dynamics in matter.

Denis Seletskiy is an Associate Professor of Engineering Physics and a holder of Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in "Ultrafast and Quantum Photonics" at Polytechnique Montréal (Canada). He received his PhD from the Optical Sciences and Engineering program at the University of New Mexico in 2010, followed by a National Research Council postdoctoral fellowship at Air Force Research Laboratories (2010-2012) and a 5-year junior group leader position and Marie Curie Zukuntskolleg Research fellowship at the University of Konstanz, Germany. In 2017 Seletskiy established the femtoQ laboratory at Polytechnique, which is focused on advancing theory, laser technology, and metrology protocols for time-domain quantum photonics. Since October 2022, he is leading an EU-CAN consortium in Mid-Infrared Quantum Technologies for Sensing (MIRAQLS).

Solid-state quantum emitters have attracted much attention as an integrated source of photonic and spin qubits, which are basic elements for a range of quantum applications. Recent advances in the generation, manipulation, and integration of these emitters have demonstrated a variety of quantum resources: bright quantum light sources, quantum memories, and spin-photon interfaces. In particular, controllable quantum emitters in photonic cavities or waveguides enable scalable quantum interactions between multiple photons and emitters. Given their high performance and scalability, quantum emitters are taking the next stages towards scalable, integrated quantum systems on photonic integrated circuits or fiber optics. Therefore, all quantum operations are efficiently possible in compact optics systems. In this talk, I introduce important challenges and recent races in scalable, integrated quantum photonics systems and new approaches to interfacing quantum emitters to commercial fiber platforms efficiently

Je-Hyung Kim received his Ph.D. in Physics at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), South Korea, in 2014. He was a postdoc researcher at the University of Maryland from 2014 to 2017. Since 2017, he has joined the Department of Physics at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), South Korea, and is now an associate professor at UNIST. Major research topics of his group are fundamental studies of quantum light-matter interactions based on solid-state quantum emitters and their applications to quantum information technologies.

Computer architects can no-longer rely upon Moore's law and Dennard scaling to run programs faster and more efficiently on digital electronic hardware. Building domain specific computing accelerators for applications such as Monte Carlo simulations can unlock speed and efficiency improvements. Monte Carlo simulations are slow and inefficient due to the repeated sampling of random numbers from non-uniform probability distributions and the propagation of those samples through equations. We designed and built a prototype accelerator for the Monte Carlo simulation sampling stage. We ran a set of C language benchmark programs over our accelerator and evaluated the number of clock cycles required to run each program and the accuracy of the results. To conclude, the talk highlights a bottleneck that appears in many domain specific analog computing accelerator architectures.

Meech completed his PhD in Domain-Specific Analog Physical Computing Accelerators in the Physical Computation Laboratory, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge funded by the Centre for Doctoral Training in Sensor Technologies and Applications in 2023. During his PhD. Meech designed and built two computing accelerators. A fast and efficient programmable random variate accelerator and an optical Fourier transform computing accelerator. Meech was awarded the NanoFutures Leadership Fellowship 2023-2024 to attempt to commercialize programmable random variate accelerator work alongside a colleague. Prior to the PhD Meech received an MRes in Sensor Technologies and Applications from the University of Cambridge and an M.Eng in General Engineering from Durham University.

Generating entanglement between distant quantum systems is at the core of quantum networking and would enable applications such as enhanced quantum sensing and distributed quantum computing. Photonic links provide a flexible and scalable platform to transfer quantum information and broker entanglement. In recent years, numerous theoretical protocols for remote entanglement generation have been proposed, of which many have been experimentally realized. In this seminar I present a modular theoretical framework to elucidate the general mechanisms of photon-mediated entanglement generation between single spins in atomic or solid-state systems [arXiv:2310.19878]. Our framework categorizes existing protocols at various levels of abstraction and allows for combining the elements of different schemes in new ways. These abstraction layers make it possible to readily compare protocols for different quantum hardware.

Hans Beukers is a PhD candidate in the group of prof. Ronald Hanson at QuTech (Delft University of Technology), working on quantum networks using color center in diamond. After finishing medical school and physics at University of Groningen, he decided to pursue his fascination for quantum mechanics. While working on a multinode quantum network based on nitrogen-vacancy centers, he got interested in the search for a more efficient and integrable quantum network node. Currently, he focusses on the control of tin-vacancy based qubits. While exploring the entanglement requirements for these different systems, he worked on a tutorial to aid designing and understanding of suitable entanglement protocols.

A large-scale quantum network, where many nodes are connected via entanglement and can share and process quantum information, holds the promise of unprecedented applications ranging from distributed quantum computing to enhanced quantum sensing and secure communication. Color centers in diamond, with their excellent optical properties, long spin coherence times, and versatile control over local nuclear spins, are among the leading platforms for building network nodes that can share entanglement using photonic quantum links. The tin-vacancy (SnV) center is a resourceful platform that features an efficient optical interface, coherent spin operation at temperatures around 1K, and compatibility with nanophotonic integrated devices, thanks to the first-order insensitivity to electric field fluctuations. Together with the recent developments in all-diamond nanofabrication and hybrid integrated photonics, this makes the SnV promising for realizing scalable and on-chip devices. This talk will give an introduction to quantum networks and focus on our work toward realizing a spin-photon interface based on SnV centers, to use it as a building block for quantum network applications. In doing this, we will present our recent results on integrating SnV in all-diamond nanophotonic waveguides, heralded initialization of the frequency and charge states, and coherent microwave control of an SnV qubit.

Matteo Pasini is a PhD researcher in the group of prof. Ronald Hanson in QuTech (Delft University of Technology), where he’s working on experimental quantum optics with color centers in diamond. Fascinated by the quantum properties of light and matter, his interest starts in quantum photonics and integrated optics and expands to the technical and fundamental challenges of interfacing basic quantum systems. His work is now focusing on enhancing the interaction between photons and diamond color centers in nanophotonic structures.

In this presentation, we present the unique properties and applications of stacked and twisted two-dimensional (2D) material.Our focus is on twisted 2D materials, which have recently attracted a lot of attention because of their ability to form moiré superlattices, leading to the discovery of new electronic phases. We discuss the practical applications of these materials, particularly in the fields of strong light-matter interactions and infrared/terahertz radiation detection. By using twisted graphene, we have found remarkable bulk photovoltaic effects, shedding light on the underlying topological properties and the physics of electron interactions. Additionally, we present a new approach to broadband single-photon detection, which relies on creating a bistable state in two-dimensional moiré superlattices, highlighting the potential for innovative optoelectronic devices.

Prof. Frank Koppens is group leader at the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO). The Quantum Nano-Optoelectronics Group, led by Prof. Koppens, is at the forefront of researching the fundamental science and potential applications of heterostructures of stacked and twisted two-dimensional (2D) materials. In particular, the group focuses on the interactions with light at extreme limits and at the nanoscale. The group integrates the realms of nanophotonics, 2D materials, topology, emerging phenomena, and strong light-matter interactions, creating a multidisciplinary approach in their research. Koppens is co-founder of the company Qurv, which commercializes images sensors for machine vision. Prof. Koppens is vice-chairman of the executive board of the graphene flagship program and leader of the optoelectronics workpackage within the flagship. Koppens has received the ERC starting grant, the ERC consolidator grant, and five ERC proof-of-concept grants. Other awards include the Christiaan Hugyensprijs 2012, the national award for research in Spain, the IUPAP young scientist prize in optics, and the ACS photonics investigator award. Since 2018 Koppens is on the Clarivate list for highly cited researchers, in the physics category, and in 20220 he has been elected as fellow of the American Physical Society.

Global efforts are currently in progress to develop prototypes for quantum networks, with the goal of realizing the quantum Internet. In this presentation, I will explore the fundamental design considerations for the quantum Internet. To address this question, I will delve into two distinct visions: 1- A unified classical-quantum Internet enabled through packet-switching. 2- Building an optical grid for entanglement distribution, effectively transforming the classical Internet into the quantum Internet. I will conclude by examining the economic aspects of building quantum networks using satellites versus optical fibers.

Alireza Shabani is a scientist and entrepreneur who recently established a quantum lab for Cisco Systems. Prior to that, he founded Qulab, a pharmaceutical startup leveraging AI to automate drug design. He was also a senior scientist at Google Quantum AI Lab. His research has been at the intersection of quantum physics, engineering, and biology. He holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California and was a postdoctoral scholar at Princeton University and UC-Berkeley.

Analog physical neural networks offer promising advancements in energy efficiency and computational speed over their digital counterparts but are typically operated in rather high-power regimes to maintain a sufficient signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). What happens if an analog system is instead operated in an ultra-low-power regime, in which the behavior of the system becomes highly stochastic and the noise is no longer a small perturbation on the signal? We immerse ourselves in the intricate dance of optical neural networks at quantum limits, where neuron activations hinge on the solitary act of a photon’s arrival, orchestrated by quantum uncertainty. Despite the overwhelming noise levels (SNR ≈ 1), our research successfully demonstrates that stochastic neural networks can be precisely trained to perform deterministic tasks with high accuracy. The methodology developed for training incorporates the stochastic nature of photon detection as a fundamental aspect. We experimentally demonstrated show a 98% accuracy for MNIST classification using an optical neural network with a hidden layer functioning at the single-photon level, utilizing only 0.008 photons per multiply-accumulate (MAC) operation, or 0.003 attojoules per MAC. Our experiment showed a greater than 40-fold reduction in photon use per inference compared to previous efforts without compromising accuracy. These findings underscore the viability of harnessing highly stochastic analog systems, even those dominated by inevitable quantum noise, for reliable neural network operations when trained appropriately.

Shi-Yuan Ma is a senior PhD candidate at Cornell University, working with Prof. Peter McMahon from 2019. His doctoral research is centered on optical computing and quantum optics, and he is eager to extend his exploration to diverse computational platforms. Shi-Yuan’s research interests focus on harnessing the potential computational power of physical systems, particularly through the use of machine learning techniques to train and analyze complex (stochastic) data and mechanisms. Prior to Cornell University, Shi-Yuan received his B.S. degree in Physics from University of Science and Technology of China, with a minor in Computer Science.

Tremendous algorithmic and experimental progress has been made towards realizing the potential of quantum computing. On the one hand, quantum algorithms and their circuit implementations are being developed and put to the test on the current generation of noisy hardware. On the other hand, hardware devices continue to expand in scale and are increasingly capable of suppressing, detecting, and correcting errors. The next challenge is to develop the crucial systems architecture to perform various computational tasks on emerging hardware more robustly and more efficiently. In this talk, I will advocate for achieving a form of early fault tolerance based on application-specific error correction. My talk will focus on a few recent results from our group at Yale about tailoring quantum error correction or detection for a range of critical applications, spanning from state preparation, expectation value estimation, quantum random access memory (QRAM), magic state functional units, and more. I will discuss the several conceptual design stages that underpin the customized error correction schemes, including logical qubit encoding, logical gate synthesis, qubit placement, and routing. More broadly, I will highlight the intricate but rewarding process of designing quantum algorithm, software and architecture in tandem.

Yongshan Ding is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Yale University, with a secondary appointment in Applied Physics. He is a member of the Yale Quantum Institute (YQI) and is affiliated with the Computer Systems Lab (CSL). Ding completed his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, receiving the William Rainey Harper Dissertation Fellowship, one of UChicago's highest honors. He is also a recipient of the Siebel Scholarship. Prior to that, he received his B.Sc. degrees in Computer Science and Physics from Carnegie Mellon University. Ding is also the lead author of a textbook, Quantum Computer Systems, in Springer Nature's Synthesis Lectures in Computer Architecture.

TBA

Mario Krenn studied Physics at the Technical University in Vienna, Austria, and did his PhD with Anton Zeilinger on quantum optics and entanglement until End of 2017. There he started to use computers to design new quantum experiments, several of which have been executed in laboratories. Afterwards, he went to Toronto, Canada, to the Lab of Alan Aspuru-Guzik to learn how Chemists and Material Scientists use Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning for the design of new molecules. Since September 2021 started and leads the "Artificial Scientist Lab" at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, Erlangen, Germany. His main research is on AI-based design of quantum experiments and discovery of new physical phenomena in that way. He is also interested in how to use AI and millions of scientific papers to suggest new scientific research directions.

A full quantum mechanical treatment of open quantum systems via a Master equation is often limited by the size of the underlying Hilbert space. As an alternative, the dynamics can also be formulated in terms of systems of coupled differential equations for operators in the Heisenberg picture. This typically leads to an infinite hierarchy of equations for products of operators. A well-established approach to truncate this infinite set at the level of expectation values is to neglect quantum correlations of high order. This is systematically realized with a so-called cumulant expansion, which decomposes expectation values of operator products into products of a given lower order, leading to a closed set of equations. In practice, the main difficulty is to derive the equations analytically, which is usually a very tedious and error-prone task. In this talk, I present our open-source framework QuantumCumulants.jl that fully automizes this approach: first, the equations of motion of operators up to a desired order are derived symbolically using predefined canonical commutation relations. Next, the resulting equations for the expectation values are expanded employing the cumulant expansion approach, where moments up to a chosen order specified by the user are included. Finally, a numerical solution can be directly obtained from the symbolic equations. After briefly explaining the cumulant expansion approach, I introduce the main concepts of the framework and demonstrate its usefulness with some example problems.

Christoph Hotter is a postdoctoral researcher in the Cavity-QED theory group of Helmut Ritsch at the University of Innsbruck. He received his PhD from the University of Innsbruck in June 2023. During his PhD he worked on collective quantum phenomena for large ensembles of clock atoms in optical cavities. His main research focuses on simulating large open quantum systems and quantum-enhanced metrology, especially in the context of squeezing, sub- and superradiance.

At room temperature, quantum optomechanical phenomena have only been observed in pioneering experiments where an optical restoring force controls the oscillator stiffness, akin to the vibrational motion of atoms in an optical lattice. These include both levitated nanoparticles and optically-trapped cantilevers. Recent advances in engineered mechanical resonators, where the restoring force is provided by material rigidity rather than an external optical potential, have realized ultra-high quality factors (Q) by exploiting`soft clamping’, achieving more than 100 quantum coherent oscillations at room temperature. In this talk, I will explain our recent advances of reaching the quantum regime of cavity optomechanics at room temperature using engineered mechanical resonators, and discuss various dominant physical processes that emerge in this parameter regime.

Guanhao Huang received B.S. degree in physics (2018) from Tsinghua University, where he worked on realizing programmable boson sampling gates in trapped ion systems. He is currently a physics PhD student in the laboratory of photonics and quantum measurements at EPFL, working on room temperature quantum optomechanics using engineered mechanical resonators, and free-electron couplings to integrated photonic circuits.

Quantum mechanics is a cornerstone of modern physics. Just as the 19th century was called the Machine Age and the 20th century the Information Age, the 21st century promises to go down in history as the Quantum Age. Quantum Computing promises unprecedented speed in solving certain classes of problems while Quantum Cryptography promises unconditional security in communications. In this talk, I will discuss the world of single and entangled photons and also discuss ongoing work towards quantum communications, quantum information and quantum computing in our Quantum Information and Computing lab at the Raman Research Institute, Bengaluru, India. I will end with our broad vision for the future, which includes establishment of long distance secure quantum communications in India and beyond involving satellite based, fibre based as well as integrated photonics based approaches towards the global quantum internet. Lab website: https://www.rri.res.in/~quic/

Urbasi Sinha is a Professor at the Raman Research Institute in Bangalore, India. She is heading the Quantum Information and Computing (QuIC) laboratory at RRI. Prof. Sinha is a Simons Emmy Noether Fellow at the Perimeter Institute, Canada as well as an associate faculty member at the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC), University of Waterloo, Canada, and the Centre for Quantum Information and Quantum Control, University of Toronto, Canada. She completed her PhD at Cambridge University, UK, on experiments in high temperature Superconductivity. She completed her M.Sc in Physics also from Cambridge. She has been a Gates Cambridge scholar during her Ph.D and a Nehru-Chevening scholar during her masters. She was a post-doctoral research associate in the Cavendish labs, Cambridge as well as at IQC Canada. Her lab at RRI specializes in experiments on photonic quantum information processing including quantum computing and quantum communication, primarily using single and entangled photons. She is heading India’s first project on satellite based secure quantum communications. Her scientific recognitions include the Homi Bhabha Fellowship in the year 2017 as well as the 2018 ICTP-ICO Gallieno Denardo Award in Optics. She was recognised as one of Asia’s Top 100 scientists by the Asian Scientist for the year 2019 and has also been awarded the Simon’s Emmy Noether Fellowship at the Perimeter Institute, Canada. In August 2020, she led the two-member winning team as a mentor, at the World Skills International Competition in Quantum Technology at the BRICS Future Skills Challenge, organised by the Russian Quantum Centre in Moscow, Russia with competitors from several countries worldwide. She won the ASSOCHAM Women in Cyber: Making a Difference award in the category “Cyber - Leading from the front” in 2021. Recently, she has been awarded the prestigious 26th SIES Chandrasekarendra Saraswathi National Eminence award for the year 2023 in the domain of science and technology.

The second quantum revolution, the transition from quantum theory to quantum engineering, is leading us toward practical quantum computing. However, there are still many obstacles hindering practical quantum computing. In this talk, I give my vision about the essential role of computing scientists in future quantum computing development, with a focus on the methodologies for transferring the knowledge we have learned in building classical computing systems to the new context. In particular, I will introduce our recent compiler work towards both near-term and long-term quantum computing, e.g., general compiler support with efficient qubit mapping, domain-specific compiler designs enabled by new intermediate representations, communication-centric compiler optimization for distributed quantum computing, and automatic surface code synthesis towards future fault-tolerant quantum computing. I will also briefly cover our studies in quantum programming language and quantum architecture.

Yufei Ding joined UCSD's computer science & engineering department as an Associate Professor In 2023. She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from North Carolina State University and a B.S. in Physics from the University of Science and Technology of China. Her research spans various system technologies, including high-level algorithmic autotuning, domain-specific programming language designs, GPU programming and optimization, advanced compilation constructions, and computer architecture. She uses her programming systems expertise to impact Quantum computing, Machine Learning, and High-performance Computing. Yufei has received several prestigious awards, including the NSF CAREER Award (2020), IEEE Computer Society TCHPC Early Career Researchers Award for Excellence in High-Performance Computing (2019), NCSU Computer Science Outstanding Dissertation Award (2018), NCSU Computer Science Outstanding Research Award (2016), and several distinguished paper nominations and awards.

This presentation unveils recent photonic crystal research with two main topics. Firstly, we showcase efficient narrow-band infrared thermal emitters achieved by intersubband transitions in multiple quantum wells (MQWs) paired with photonic-crystal resonance. Our breakthrough enables dynamic control of narrowband thermal emission, vital for compact and energy-efficient spectroscopic sensing systems. Secondly, we present high Q factor SiC photonic crystal nanocavity research, addressing challenges and solutions for achieving superior Q factors. This innovation holds potential for optimizing optical cavity performance. Shifting focus, we spotlight projects from the Korea Institute of Science and Technology's Center for Quantum Information. These projects include diamond NV center-based quantum technologies like spin-qubit control, diamond nanophotonics, and bright NV centers.

Dongyeon Daniel Kang earned his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Kyoto University in Japan and later completed his Ph.D. in Electronic Science and Engineering in 2018. His academic journey led him through diverse roles in Prof. Susumu Noda's laboratory, from an undergraduate to a graduate student and then a postdoctoral researcher. His focus was on developing photonic crystal optical/optoelectronic devices for thermal emission control and optical cavity enhancement. Following his postdoctoral work at the Institute for Quantum Computing and Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, he joined Samsung Electronics, contributing to the development of nano-scale CMOS image sensors. Presently, as a senior researcher at the Center for Quantum Information in Korea Institute of Science and Technology, he delves into the study of spin-photon interfaces with NV centers in diamond.

Many open problems in physics from the Haldane conjecture regarding Heisenberg models with integer spins to the existence of the topological spin liquid phase to the Yang-Mills mass gap problem, one of the famed millennium problems, and an explanation of quark confinement are concerned with spectral gaps. The spectral gap is the energy difference between the ground and first excited states of a system and governs many of its behaviors, especially at lower energy. We show that the spectral gap can be calculated as a simple ratio of the two expectation values calculated over the wave function propagated in imaginary time. This method constitutes a significant simplification over the existing methods for spectral gap calculation. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this method on the Fermi-Hubbard and transverse field Ising models. Additionally, we discuss the implementation of the method on a quantum computer. Sandia National Labs is managed and operated by NTESS under DOE NNSA contract DENA0003525. SAND2022-14593 A.

I am a fifth year PhD student at Tulane University under Dr. Denys Bondar. The primary focus of our group is the research of quantum technologies and systems. Recently, my research has been directed towards the development of novel methods for obtaining the energies of quantum systems, with a particular focus on the ground and low-lying excited states. These methods often take some inspiration from the techniques of quantum control theory. Previously, I have also done work in researching the analogies between classical optics and quantum mechanics. The principles of quantum control theory could be useful in further exploring these types of analogies.

Avalanche effects, where a small input is amplified to produce an enormous output, have found various applications in industries such as lasers and avalanching photodiodes. Photon avalanche, an optical avalanche process that exhibits an extremely nonlinear response in lanthanide-doped materials, has garnered significant interest due to its potential impact on numerous applications, including phase-conjugate imaging, infrared quantum counting, and efficient upconverted lasing. Recently, photon avalanche has been observed in single nanoparticles, opening new possibilities for a wide range of novel applications in environmental sensing, super-resolution imaging, and high-density optical memory. In this talk, I will begin by discussing the photon avalanche behavior of Tm3+-doped NaYF4 nanocrystal. I will focus on unique photophysical properties of these avalanching nanocrystals derived from optical experiments and rate equation modeling. Next, I will introduce the photoswitching behavior of avalanching nanoparticles, and present a proposed photoswitching mechanism associated with color center generation. Lastly, I will introduce several applications of these avalanching nanoparticles including 2D and 3D optical patterning as well as scanning- and widefield-based super-resolution imaging.

Changhwan Lee is a postdoctoral researcher working at Schuck lab at Columbia University. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Columbia University in 2022. During his PhD, He focused on realizing avalanche effects in lanthanide-doped upconverting nanoparticles and exploring their applications.

The inherently probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics means that many quantum algorithms must be repeated a large number of times to perform a computation. Such algorithms would benefit from pipelining, where an iteration of the quantum circuit starts for a fresh set of qubits before the operations on the previous set of qubits has finished. This approach changes runtime scaling from multiplicative to additive as functions of circuit depth and number of qubits. Pipelining is used in classical computing, and enabled by physically moving around bits. This requires a much larger number of structures compared to the number of bits. The silicon spin qubit platform, based on structures similar to microprocessors, is well suited for defining a qubit processor as a large number of structures and moving qubits. To this end, spin carrying electrons may be synchronously shuttled through a large grid, which has recently shown to be a high-fidelity operation [Yoneda et al. 2020], to realise pipelining. To demonstrate feasibility in the selected platform, we lay out protocols for spin qubits to acquire the phases associated with single- and two-qubit operations as they process through the pipeline. We meet the stringent requirements of synchronisation, high fidelities, and challenges associated with qubit frequency variability using small controlled g-factor Stark shifts, new composite two-qubit circuit identities, and a multi-tone transversal drive. The qubit frequency variability is governed by fabrication processes. As such, control protocols working around variability rather than requiring increased homogeneity are expected to be useful.

I studied theoretical physics in the University of Helsinki, where I did my undergrad projects in Prof. Mikko Möttönen's group on theoretical quantum optics and experimental superconducting qubit control. I joined University College London's Quantum Technologies PhD program to do my PhD in Prof. John Morton's group, and worked as a quantum engineer at his startup Quantum Motion Technologies (QMT) in projects related to silicon spin qubits, with particular interest in qubit couplers for scalable architectures.  At this interface, I've worked out the required hardware and qubit control protocols to realise pipelining - a form of classical parallelisation - with silicon spin qubits. I was the main designer for the first generations of QMT's qubit devices, made using imec's 300 mm 3-gate-layer process, with complexity ranging from process control monitors to small 2xN quantum dot (QD) arrays. Using a subset of these devices, I took the first experimental steps towards demonstrating mediated exchange in SiMOS, with estimated high-fidelity operation above MHz. I've also observed electrically driven electron spin singlet-triplet oscillations in a nanowire QD device. Recently I've worked help realise kinetic inductance based parametric amplifiers for spin memory experiments using quadrature readout. In my spare time, I enjoy bouldering, silly conversations, reading, and sometimes drawing. 

One of the central goals in quantum information science is constructing a quantum network useful for quantum communication, sensing, and computation. Its realization crucially depends on efficient distribution of entanglement. A promising approach entails connecting quantum nodes via photons, which are naturally resilient against decoherence, and storing quantum bits in atomic memories; among which, solid state spin qubits in diamond are particularly promising candidates for memory storage in a quantum repeater network. However, experimental efforts thus far have been mainly stymied by the absence of efficient and scalable spin-photon interfaces. To address these challenges, we propose a photonic integrated circuit architecture with heterogeneously integrated emitter-nanocavity systems for faithfully transferring photonic qubits onto diamond color centers. This hybrid platform offers arbitrary photonic routing, phase stability, and reconfigurability to achieve high-fidelity and high-efficiency local and remote entanglement generation. Subsequently, we report our experimental efforts in realizing a cavity-enhanced optical interface with tin-vacancy centers in diamond and characterizing a heterogeneously integrated emitter-cavity system in a silicon nitride photonic integrated circuit. The on-chip components allow for additional control over both the spin and optical degrees of freedom necessary for achieving spin-photon entanglement. As an outlook, we discuss how the experimental results and ongoing efforts pave the path towards additional quantum network applications, such as realizing a quantum random access memory.

Kevin C. Chen is currently a PhD student in the MIT Quantum Photonics group. His research focuses on developing scalable quantum networking systems based on color centers in diamond and integrated photonics.

Long distance quantum implementations would strongly benefit from the use of photons as carriers of information. In both free-space connections, as well as fibre-based networks, the use of light within telecommunication bands will have various advantages. As exemplary in glass fibres, the backbone of our communication infrastructures, the use of quantum light in the so-called telecom O- (centred around 1310 nm) and C-band (centred around 1550 nm) would have the advantages of experiencing minimal photon wavepacket dispersion and absorption. Semiconductor quantum dots are considered as very appealing sources of quantum light, in particular the systems based on the GaAs material platform. We will discuss the techniques that can be employed to realize In(Ga)As/GaAs quantum dots emitting in the telecom O- and C-bands [1]. Furthermore, we will discuss advanced fabrication techniques [2] and optical resonators that can be employed to enhance the source brightness and performances, even operating at liquid nitrogen temperature [3]. Finally, In(Ga)As QDs emitting in the telecom C-band will be integrated into circular Bragg grating cavities. Thanks to Purcell enhancement, a fibre-coupled single-photon count rate of 13.9 MHz is observed (excitation rep. rate of 228 MHz, first-lens collection efficiency ~17%), with a multi-photon contribution as low as g(2)(0) = 0.0052. Operation up to 40K will be discussed [4]. [1] S. L. Portalupi, et al., Semicond. Sci. Technol. 34, 053001 (2019) [2] M. Sartison, et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 113, 032103 (2018) [3] S. Kolatschek, et al., Nano Lett. 21, 7740 (2021) [4] C. Nawrath, et al., ArXiv 2207.12898 (2022).

Simone Luca Portalupi received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Pavia, Italy in 2012, working on silicon photonics and spectroscopy of nanostructures and fabrication of photonic crystal cavities (last topic in St. Andrews, UK). As post-doctoral fellow (CNRS in Paris, France), he researched on semiconductor quantum dots (III–V platform), cavity quantum electrodynamics, and deterministic nanofabrication techniques. Currently, he is group leader of the quantum optics group at the IHFG,University of Stuttgart, Germany. His research focuses on quantum optics with semiconductor quantum dots, integrated quantum photonics, hybrid quantum systems, long-distance quantum communication and implementation of advanced nanofabrication techniques.

The talk's start time is postponed by an hour. The talk will start at 12:00. Phonons in piezoelectric materials have played a pivotal role in radio-frequency signal processing since the advent of the crystal oscillator 100 years ago. Fast-forward to today: we all carry dozens of piezoelectric acoustic wave devices in our pockets, and many promising quantum information processing systems use phonons as a means to mediate interactions between different qubit modalities. However, the phonons in all these examples behave completely linearly. What could we do with phonons if we could enter the regime of strongly nonlinear phononics? In this talk, I will describe a methodology my group has developed to create very strong microwave frequency phononic nonlinearities that now puts us squarely in that regime. I will discuss recent results on phononic phase-preserving amplification, frequency conversion, and phononic Kerr nonlinearity. I will also discuss the prospects of this work looking forward, where these systems may hold the key to an era of quantum phononics with functionality and performance that rivals that of quantum photonics.

Matt Eichenfield is an Associate Professor and the SPIE Endowed Chair in the University of Arizona’s College of Optical Sciences, as well as a Distinguished Faculty Joint Appointee at Sandia National Labs. He received his BS in physics from UNLV in 2004 and his PhD in physics from Caltech in 2010 in the group of Professor Oskar Painter. After finishing his PhD, he was Caltech's first Kavli Nanoscience Prize Postdoctoral Fellow before joining Sandia as a Harry S. Truman Fellow in 2011. At Sandia he founded and led the MEMS-Enabled Quantum Systems group and conducted research there on integrated photonics, phononics, and sensing. He began his joint appointment with UA and Sandia in 2022 and now has research groups at both institutions.

Quantum systems that are highly controllable, scalable, and preserve quantum properties for extended periods of time are the key driver of the second quantum revolution. Atoms and molecules - pristine miniature quantum systems provided by Nature – have extremely promising properties in this regard. In this talk, I will discuss our recent progress in synthesizing, controlling, and stabilizing dipolar molecules of NaCs [1,2]. We have demonstrated that rotational qubits in NaCs can be controlled via microwave pulses on the nanosecond-scale, rivaling control times of many traditional qubit platforms. In addition, we have demonstrated that microwave shielding can enhance the lifetimes of dense NaCs ensembles by a factor of 100. NaCs molecules hold great promise for becoming a new modality for quantum simulation and quantum computing. I will also discuss our TweeSr project on optical tweezer arrays of strontium. We have developed a new source for cold strontium [4] and demonstrated holographic metasurfaces as a new way to create high-quality atomic tweezer arrays [5]. Leveraging a Sr transition in the mid-infrared, we pursue the controlled creation of superradiant and subradiant states. [1] C. Warner et al., Overlapping Bose-Einstein Condensates of Na and Cs, Phys. Rev. A 104, 033302 (2021). [2] I. Stevenson et al., Ultracold Gases of Dipolar NaCs Ground State Molecules, Phys. Rev. Lett. 130, 113002 (2023). [3] N. Bigagli et al., Collisionally Stable Gas of Bosonic Dipolar Ground State Molecules, arXiv:2303.16845 (2023). [4] M. Kwon, A. Holman, et al. Jet-loaded cold atomic beam source for strontium, Rev. Sci. Instr. 94, 013202 (2023). [5] X. Huang, W. Yuan, et al. Metasurface Holographic Optical Traps for Ultracold Atoms, Prog. Quantum Electr. 100470 (2023).

Sebastian Will is a professor of experimental quantum physics at Columbia University. He and his team work towards single atom and single molecule control for applications in fundamental science, quantum sensing, quantum simulation, and quantum computing. Sebastian has received the MIT Infinite Kilometer Award, the Columbia RISE Award, the NSF Career Award, and a Fellow of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

The ability to manipulate wave transport phenomena and to enhance light-matter interactions using silicon-compatible, dispersion-engineered materials, epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) platforms, and complex photonic media with desired radiation properties is at the heart of current nanophotonics and metamaterials technologies. For example, the dramatic enhancement of the nonlinear optical interactions of transparent conductive oxides (TCOs) provides unique opportunities to engineer novel optoelectronic devices with order-of-unity (non-perturbative) refractive index changes on sub-picosecond time scales for dynamically tunable metasurfaces, broadband optical modulators, optical switching, and time-varying photonics applications on the chip. Moreover, recent progress in the theory, inverse-design, fabrication, and characterization of high-refractive index, low-loss, diffractive optical elements and dielectric nanostructures with tailored disorder and hyperuniform geometries established novel strategies to engineer ultra-compact imaging devices and nanostructures with desired wave transport and localization properties over targeted spectral- and spatial-frequency bandwidths. In this talk, I will discuss our work on the design, fabrication, and characterization of highly nonlinear Si-compatible materials and nanostructures based on the indium tin oxide (ITO) platform with tunable ENZ responses across the near-infrared spectral range. In particular, I will address the non-perturbative Kerr-type optical nonlinearity of fabricated materials and resonant devices driven by the excitation of optical Tamm states. Building on this platform, I will illustrate the potential of topologically optimized high-Q nonlinear dielectric nanocavities for extreme sub-wavelength field confinement potentially enabling photon-blockade and strong-coupling effects. Next, I will present our recent work on the inverse-design of ultra-compact and multifunctional spectroscopic imaging devices based on diffractive optical networks (a-DONs) and the adjoint optimization of high-refractive index functionalized scattering arrays for imaging and radiation engineering on the chip. Finally, I will provide a perspective on anomalous diffusion and light localization in multifractal photonic environments that encode the characteristic multiscale complexity of number-theoretic sequences and algebraic number fields beyond random lasing device applications. Related references: 1) A. Capretti, Y. Wang, N. Engheta, L. Dal Negro “Enhanced third-harmonic generation in Si-compatible epsilon-near-zero indium tin oxide nanolayers”, Opt. Lett., Vol. 40, Issue 7, 1500-1503, (2015) 2) W. Britton, F. Sgrignuoli, L. Dal Negro, “Structure-dependent optical nonlinearity of indium tin oxide”, Appl. Phys. Lett. 120, 101901 (2022) 3) W. Britton, Y. Chen, F. Sgrignuoli, L. Dal Negro, “Phase-Modulated Axilenses As Ultracompact Spectroscopic Tools”, ACS Photonics, 7, 10, 2731–2738 (2020) 4) W. Britton, Y. Chen, F. Sgrignuoli, L. Dal Negro, “Compact Dual-Band Multi-Focal Diffractive Lenses”, Laser Photonics Rev. 15, 2000207 (2021) 5) Y. Chen, Y. Zhu, W. A. Britton, and L. Dal Negro, “Inverse design of ultracompact multi-focal optical devices by diffractive neural networks”, Opt. Lett., Vol. 47, No. 11, 2842-2845, (2022). 6) Y. Zhu, Y. Chen, and L. Dal Negro, “Design of ultracompact broadband focusing spectrometers based on diffractive optical networks”, Opt. Lett., Vol. 47, No. 24, 6309-6312, (2022). 7) S. Gorsky; W. A. Britton; Y. Chen, J. Montaner; A. Lenef, M. Raukas, L. Dal Negro, “Engineered hyperuniformity for directional light extraction”, APL Photonics 4, 110801 (2019) 8) F. Sgrignuoli, S. Gorsky, W. A. Britton, R. Zhang, F. Riboli, and L. Dal Negro, “Multifractality of light in photonic arrays based on algebraic number theory” Communications Physics, 3, 106 (2020). 9) Y. Chen, F. Sgrignuoli, Y. Zhu, T. Shubitidze, and L. Dal Negro, “Enhanced wave localization in multifractal scattering media”, Phys. Rev. B 107, 054201 (2023). 10) L. Dal Negro, “Waves in Complex Media”, Cambridge University Press (2022).

Luca Dal Negro received both the Laurea in physics, cum laude, in 1999 and the Ph.D. degree in semiconductor physics from the University of Trento (Italy) in 2003. After his Ph.D. he joined MIT as a post-doctoral research associate. Since January 2006 he is a faculty member in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Boston University (BU). He is currently a Full Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, a member of the Boston University Photonics Center and has appointments in the Department of Physics and the Division of Material Science at Boston University. Prof. Dal Negro manages and conducts research projects on light transport and localization in complex media, nano-optics and plasmonics, optical materials, and metamaterials. He is an editor of the journal MRS Communications, published jointly by the Materials Research Society and Springer, and was associate editor of the European Physical Journal (EPJ) Plus, published by Springer-Verlag for the European Physical Society. He has authored and co-authored over 250 technical papers, 16 book chapters, 2 books, and has a google scholar h-index=63 and more than 15,800 citations. His research work resulted in several Awards including the Early Career Research Excellence Award and the National Science Foundation (NSF) Career Award. Prof. Dal Negro has been elected Fellow of the Optical Society of America (currently OPTICA) “For his numerous contributions in the theoretical and experimental aspects of wave interaction with aperiodic nanostructures”.

This talk will highlight opportunities for microwave and terahertz science and technology from nonlinear integrated photonic circuits that are becoming increasingly accessible. Two platforms - hybrid silicon-organic and thin film lithium niobate – are emerging as leading platforms. Their present and future applications in classical and quantum will be discussed.

https://people.epfl.ch/cristina.benea?lang=en

Measurement of the faintest signals has become a vital part of disciplines as diverse as medicine, astronomy, interplanetary communications and intelligence gathering. While our curiosity has driven us to probe ever-weaker signals in Nature, the framework and philosophy for our measurement tools has remained largely unchanged for centuries, entrenched in a classical interpretation of our world – which we know to be incomplete. In this talk I will present a holistic approach to sensing which combines quantum mechanics, information theory and measurement. We will explore the fundamental differences between a classical and quantum understanding of weak signals. With a quantum representation of Nature, applying a quantum information theoretic analysis can inspire paradigmatic shifts in the design of measurement tools. We will explore several examples where a quantum theoretic approach to sensing has resulted in radical improvements in our ability to detect and characterize photon-starved signals. In unison with the technical portion of this talk, I will provide an impassioned argument that both quantum mechanics and information theory are vital to understanding our natural world and should become mainstream curriculum in the undergraduate education across all disciplines.

Jonathan L. Habif is an experimental physicist and research lead and research professor at the University of Southern California information Sciences Institute (ISI). Professor Habif holds a bachelor’s degree in physics from Colgate University an M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Rochester in electrical and computer engineering and applied physics. He conducted postdoctoral work in the Research Laboratory for Electronics (RLE) at MIT. His recent research has focused on photon-starved, classical communication and imaging, quantum-secured optical communications in free-space and fiber, and integrated nano-photonic for both classical and non-classical applications. Prof. Habif leads USC’s Laboratory for Quantum-Limited Information (QLIlab) located outside Boston, MA. The QLIlab is dedicated to understanding and demonstrating the fundamental limits for extracting information from physical signals.

Recent studies in the interdisciplinary area of photonics, free electrons, and quantum physics open up new applications, such as free-electron light sources, dielectric laser accelerators (DLAs), and optical manipulation of electron pulses. In particular, DLAs utilize the strong field in laser to accelerate the electrons, which provide high acceleration gradient, compact size, and potentially low cost. DLAs have a wide range of applications in scientific research, industry, and medical diagnosis and treatment. With progress in the control of free electrons, researchers have demonstrated the wave-function engineering of free electrons, which promotes the application of free electrons for quantum manipulation and quantum sensing. In this presentation, I will talk about this exciting research area and share my studies on the design of dielectric laser accelerators, electron compression with optical beat note, and quantum free-electron–atom interaction.

Dr. Zhexin Zhao did her PhD study on nanophotonics at Stanford University. She received the bachelor degree in electronic engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 2015, and the M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering (with Ph.D. minor in physics) from Stanford University, U.S., in 2018 and 2021, respectively. Her research interests include photonic design, electromagnetic theory, light-matter interaction, laser-based electron acceleration and modulation, quantum physics, and optical design for augmented reality.

Advances in the fabrication of large-scale integrated silicon photonics have sparked interest in optical systems that process information at high speeds with ultra-low energy consumption. Recent demonstrations have shown these systems' ability to accelerate tasks in quantum simulation, artificial intelligence, and signal processing. In this talk, I will discuss work towards scaling up these systems to perform useful computation. I will begin by discussing the development of error correction algorithms for programmable photonic processors, whose capabilities are believed to be limited by fabrication error. By applying deterministic, gate-by-gate error correction, I show that these systems, despite relying on imprecise, analog components, can be efficiently programmed to implement highly accurate computation. I will also discuss my work towards realizing low-loss, alignment-tolerant optical interconnects, facilitating the assembly of complex photonic systems with large channel counts. Finally, I will discuss the design and demonstration of a single-chip, end-to-end photonic processor for deep neural networks (DNNs). This fully-integrated coherent optical neural network (FICONN), which monolithically integrates multiple all-optical processor units for matrix algebra and nonlinear activation functions into a single chip, implements single-shot inference across a DNN with sub-nanosecond latency. We experimentally demonstrate on-chip, in situ training of a DNN, obtaining accuracies comparable to a digital system. Our work lends experimental evidence to proposals for optically-accelerated training, enabling orders of magnitude improvements in the throughput of training data. Moreover, the FICONN opens the path to inference at nanosecond latency and femtojoule per operation energy efficiency.

Saumil Bandyopadhyay received his S.B. and M.Eng. in Electrical Engineering from MIT in 2017 and 2018, respectively. He is a recipient of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and is currently with the Quantum Photonics Group at MIT, where he works on integrated silicon photonic systems for computing.

Entanglement is known to boost the efficiency of classical communication. In distributed computation, for instance, exploiting entanglement can reduce the number of communicated bits or increase the probability to obtain a correct answer. Entanglement-assisted classical communication protocols usually consist of two successive rounds: first a Bell test round, in which the parties measure their local shares of the entangled state, and then a communication round, where they exchange classical messages. Here, we go beyond this standard approach and investigate adaptive uses of entanglement: we allow the receiver to wait for the arrival of the sender’s message before measuring his share of the entangled state. We first show that such adaptive protocols improve the success probability in Random Access Codes. Second, we show that once adaptive measurements are used, an entanglement-assisted bit becomes a strictly stronger resource than a qubit in prepare-and-measure scenarios. We discuss the extension of these ideas to scenarios involving quantum communication and identify resource inequalities.

Ph.D. "Spin dynamics in rare-earth ion-doped crystals for optical quantum memories", from the University of Geneva, under the supervision of Dr. Mikael Afzelius and Prof. Nicolas Gisin. Postdocs: quantum correlations (foundational, theory), e.g. Bell nonlocality, contextuality. I am an Assistant Professor in Instituto Superior Técnico, and have recently started a group in Instituto de Telecomunicações. We have a small lab called the Quantum Photonics Laboratory (QuLab), where we work on applications of quantum correlations to quantum communication, and free-space quantum communication.

Integrated photonics has grown in the last decade to fill the market with classical devices that offer tremendous SWaP benefits over conventional bulk optics and fiber components. For quantum systems the device losses were still too large to allow for large system scaling as well as too narrow a transparency window to cover all the qubit technologies. Over the last couple years, both industry and government laboratories have worked closely with commercial institutions to address both issues by reducing the waveguide losses, developing low-loss components, and initiating the process to include ultrawide-bandgap photonic materials into the fabrication process. These research areas, the results, and the next steps forward for integrating other materials and qubit systems into the platform will be the subject of my talk.

Dr. Michael Fanto is a Senior Research Physicist with the Air Force Research Laboratory, Information Directorate in the Quantum Technologies Branch located in Rome, New York. He is the lead for the quantum information processing group where he conducts research on quantum photonic integrated circuits (QPICs), heterogeneous qubit integration, entanglement distribution, quantum networking, and quantum information processing. He completed his BS degree in Physics from Utica College, and his Ph.D. in Microsystems Engineering from Rochester Institute of Technology where his thesis focused on ultrawide-bandgap QPICs.

Optics and machine learning are natural symbionts. I will present three examples of how these fields can benefit each other based on our recent experimental work: • optical neural networks and their all-optical training; • robotic alignment of optical experiments; • application of machine learning in linear-optical far-field superresolution imaging.

Alexander Lvovsky is an experimental physicist. He was born and raised in Moscow and did his undergraduate in Physics at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. In 1993, he became a graduate student in Physics at Columbia University in New York City. His thesis research, conducted under the supervision of Dr. Sven R. Hartmann, was in the field of coherent optical transients in atomic gases. After completing his Ph. D. in 1998, he spent a year at the University of California, Berkeley as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Physics, and then five years at Universität Konstanz in Germany, first as an Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral fellow, then as a research group leader in quantum-optical information technology. In 2004 he became Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Calgary, and from autumn 2018, a professor at the University of Oxford. Alexander is a past Canada Research Chair, a lifetime member of the American Physical Society, a Fellow of the Optical Society and a winner of many awards – most notably the International Quantum Communications award, commendation letter from the Prime Minister of Canada and the Emmy Noether research award of the German Science Foundation. His work has been featured by CBC, NBC, Wired, New Scientist, MIT Technology Review, the Guardian, TASS and even Daily Mail.

The detection of small nanoparticles and individual molecules has traditionally relied on fluorescence, however, this technique is usually limited by the photophysics and by the requirement of labeling. Interferometric scattering (iSCAT) microscopy, which leverages the Rayleigh scattering of nanoparticles, has proven to be a powerful label-free alternative for the detection of small nanoparticles and single molecules. In this presentation, I will highlight the recent advancements in iSCAT microscopy as a method for high spatio-temporal 3D tracking of nanoparticles and imaging in complex environments. Through a quantitative understanding of the iSCAT point spread function (iPSF) and modeling the experimental imaging apparatus, we have developed a novel algorithm for 3D tracking of single nanoparticles with µs temporal and sub-nanometer spatial resolution. Our technique also offers potential for precise sizing of nanoparticles in liquid suspensions, as well as investigation of molecular interactions at surfaces. Additionally, I will introduce a data analysis toolbox that allows us to model the speckle pattern and iPSF distortion on scattering surfaces, providing us with phase information and enabling us to track nanoparticles in highly speckled environments. Lastly, I will showcase a new iSCAT modality that reduces speckles and provides label-free visualization of cellular components such as the endoplasmic reticulum and vesicle transport.

Mahdi Mazaheri obtained his B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering at the University of Tehran. He furthered his education with an M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering, where his thesis focused on the design and fabrication of a device to enhance photon-induced current in plasmonic nanostructures. Building on his expertise in electrical engineering, Mahdi continued his academic journey with a second M.Sc. in Integrated Life Sciences awarded with distinction from Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen, Germany with a thesis focus on ultra-high-speed imaging of rotational diffusion of a gold nanorod on a supported lipid bilayer. Currently, Mahdi is a PhD student in the group of Prof. Vahid Sandoghdar at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light. Mahdi’s research is centered on development of microscopy techniques, with a specific emphasis on tracking and imaging in highly scattering media. By combining computational modeling of optical systems with experiments and developing signal processing toolboxes, Mahdi aims to tackle the challenges presented by tracking and imaging in scattering media, primarily via interferometric scattering microscopy.

The detection of small nanoparticles and individual molecules has traditionally relied on fluorescence, however, this technique is usually limited by the photophysics and by the requirement of labeling. Interferometric scattering (iSCAT) microscopy, which leverages the Rayleigh scattering of nanoparticles, has proven to be a powerful label-free alternative for the detection of small nanoparticles and single molecules. In this presentation, I will highlight the recent advancements in iSCAT microscopy as a method for high spatio-temporal 3D tracking of nanoparticles and imaging in complex environments. Through a quantitative understanding of the iSCAT point spread function (iPSF) and modeling the experimental imaging apparatus, we have developed a novel algorithm for 3D tracking of single nanoparticles with µs temporal and sub-nanometer spatial resolution. Our technique also offers potential for precise sizing of nanoparticles in liquid suspensions, as well as investigation of molecular interactions at surfaces. Additionally, I will introduce a data analysis toolbox that allows us to model the speckle pattern and iPSF distortion on scattering surfaces, providing us with phase information and enabling us to track nanoparticles in highly speckled environments. Lastly, I will showcase a new iSCAT modality that reduces speckles and provides label-free visualization of cellular components such as the endoplasmic reticulum and vesicle transport.

Mahdi Mazaheri obtained his B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering at the University of Tehran. He furthered his education with an M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering, where his thesis focused on the design and fabrication of a device to enhance photon-induced current in plasmonic nanostructures. Building on his expertise in electrical engineering, Mahdi continued his academic journey with a second M.Sc. in Integrated Life Sciences awarded with distinction from Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen, Germany with a thesis focus on ultra-high-speed imaging of rotational diffusion of a gold nanorod on a supported lipid bilayer. Currently, Mahdi is a PhD student in the group of Prof. Vahid Sandoghdar at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light. Mahdi’s research is centered on development of microscopy techniques, with a specific emphasis on tracking and imaging in highly scattering media. By combining computational modeling of optical systems with experiments and developing signal processing toolboxes, Mahdi aims to tackle the challenges presented by tracking and imaging in scattering media, primarily via interferometric scattering microscopy.

Quantum photonics often relies on nonlinear optics for the generation of photons, followed by reconfigurable linear optical networks for coherent control. In this talk, I will start by reviewing our study of multimode nonlinear optics in fibers [1,2], which also enabled our realization of an all-fiber entangled photon pairs source [3]. These photons are spatially entangled in the eigenmodes of the multimode fiber, allowing for high-dimensional quantum communications. I will then present a couple of methods to coherently control such states. The first is achieved by multiplane light conversion based on a spatial light modulator [4], while the second is by employing a “Fiber piano” [5]; a piezo-actuator array that deforms the multimode fiber. Finally, I will introduce a novel Quantum Key Distribution protocol that utilizes high-dimensional encoding to boost the secure key rate and its experimental implementation in the Israeli Quantum Key Distribution National Demonstrator [6]. [1] Kfir Sulimany, et al. Physical Review Letters 121.13 (2018): 133902. [2] Kfir Sulimany, et al. Optica 9.11 (2022): 1260-1267. [3] Kfir Sulimany, and Yaron Bromberg. npj Quantum Information 8.1 (2022): 1-5. [4] Ohad Lib, Kfir Sulimany, and Yaron Bromberg. Physical Review Applied 18.1 (2022): 014063. [5] Zohar Finkelstein, Kfir Sulimany, et al. arXiv preprint arXiv:2208.03778 (2022). [6] Kfir Sulimany, et al. arXiv preprint arXiv:2105.04733 (2021).

Kfir Sulimany received his B.Sc. in Physics and Mathematics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as part of the "Talpiot" elite program. He also acquired a Diploma in Computer Science for B.Sc. graduates from the Open University of Israel. As part of the "Talpiot" program, Kfir was an R&D team leader of 8 physicists and engineers and developed advanced electro-optical systems including the Israeli Quantum Key Distribution National Project. Meanwhile, Kfir completed his M.Sc. in Prof. Hadar Steinberg’s lab in the field of nonlinear optics. Today, Kfir’s Ph.D. research in Prof. Yaron Bromberg’s lab is mainly focused on quantum communications. Following his research, Kfir was chosen as the recipient of the Quantum Technology Fellowship from the Israeli Council for Higher Education and The Excellence Award for Ph.D. research from the Quantum Information Science Center of the Hebrew University.

Solid-state color centers, and in particular T centers in silicon, offer many advantages as a basis for quantum networking technologies, including direct telecommunications-band photonic emission, long-lived electron and nuclear spin qubits, and native integration into industry-standard, CMOS-compatible silicon-on-insulator (SOI) photonic chips at scale. By utilizing these properties, electrical tuning of the zero phonon line of a T ensemble in silicon enriched to 99.995% up to 1.45 GHz is demonstrated using photoluminescence excitation (PLE) spectroscopy. Theoretical analysis supports the results. Additionally, studies of T ensemble in terms of its spectral diffusion, inhomogeneous broadening, and zero-field hyperfine structure, which are crucial for generating indistinguishable single photons, a requirement for scalable quantum networks, are also reported. Overall, this work highlights the potential of T centers in silicon as a solid-state spin-photon interface for scalable quantum networks and distributed quantum computing by achieving precise control over the optical transition energies of individual emitters.

Dr. Amirhossein AlizadehKhaledi is a postdoctoral researcher currently working at the Silicon Quantum Technology Lab at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. His expertise is in the field of silicon quantum technology and integrated photonics. His current research mainly focuses on developing advanced technologies for scalable quantum networks, particularly in the characterization and control of defects in silicon known as T centers which have promising properties for quantum computing and communication. During his PhD in Nanoplasmonics Research Group at the Centre for Advanced Materials & related Technologies at UVic, he made contributions in the field of nanoplasmonics, including developing techniques for trapping single upconversion nanoparticles containing erbium. His achievements in this field were recognized by being nominated for the Governor General's Academic Gold Medal and the Breakthrough award of the year. He also investigated how light interacts with nanoparticles, characterized single proteins, probed the Raman-active acoustic vibrations of nanoparticles, and investigated light-induced tunneling inelastic emission.

Quantum networks offer the ability to employ more secure protocols than modern communication. For advanced quantum network protocols, qubits containing states that can be optically accessed and can store quantum properties for a long time are encouraging. Spin qubits in Si offer long coherence times, and the maturated micro- and nanofabrication techniques can be exploited to miniaturise quantum devices. Additionally, modern telecommunication networks also make use of Si-based materials because of the efficient optical confinement achievable. To minimise the photon losses and leverage on these well-established telecommunication networks, the photons excited from the spin states in Si should emit within the telecommunication C-band. In this sense, Er3+ ions in Si form an attractive qubit system because of the Er3+ ions exhibiting a spin transition that can be accessed by photons with frequencies within the telecommunication C-band. In this seminar, the optical and spin properties of Er3+ ions in Si are presented with the aim to create an interface between a spin qubit and a flying qubit. Here, the optical measurements include the extraction of inhomogeneous and homogeneous broadening of Er3+ ions in Si over various samples, observing linewidths down to less than 100 MHz and 500 kHz, respectively. The low Er3+ density in natural Si samples showed characteristics of long-lived electron spin states with spin-lattice relaxation times of over 10 s and a Rabi oscillation decay of over a microsecond. For the electron spin of an Er3+ site in a nuclear-spin-free Si crystal, a Rabi oscillation decay up to 50 us was measured, and by employing a Hahn echo sequence, a coherence time up to 1.1 ms was measured. These optical and spin properties establish that Er3+ ions in Si exhibit fundamentally promising properties for quantum networks.

Ian Berkman received his BSc in Physics in 2015 at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Following, Ian graduated in 2018 from TU Delft with a MSc in Applied Physics and a specialisation in quantum nanoscience. For his doctorate degree, Ian investigated the intrinsic properties of erbium in silicon with the aim of using Er3+:Si systems for quantum communication, as well as quantum computation purposes at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, in Prof. Sven Rogge's group. Ian submitted his PhD thesis in October 2022 and continues working as a postdoctoral researcher on Er3+:Si in Prof. Sven Rogge's group.

Silicon is the most widely used semiconductor material. It is cheap, abundant, and non-toxic – maybe most importantly: industry has spent a fortune developing it over the last half a century, and the complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) methods are undoubtedly the most mature nanofabrication technology, enabling a fast transition from research to commercialization. Foundries achieve unchallenged performance in terms of yield, resolution, and complexity – but often sacrifice the extreme performance needed to study novel physics in order to maintain a high throughput. In this talk, I will present a silicon nanofabrication process tailored to the silicon-on-insulator platform, which is capable of manufacturing nanometer-scale features vertically and with low roughness. We combine this process with fabrication-constrained topology optimization to realize a dielectric cavity with a mode volume V = 3×10−4 𝜆^3, quality factor Q = 1100, and footprint 4𝜆^2 for telecom photons with a 𝜆 ∼ 1550 nm wavelength. The cavity confines light inside an 8-nm–bowtie etched with an ultra-high aspect ratio of 30, and the mode volume is an order of magnitude smaller compared to previous experiments in dielectrics. We measure the near-field of the cavity mode to corroborate the extreme dielectric confinement of light [Nat. Commun. 13, 6281 (2022)]. Additionally, we use the same process to fabricate reconfigurable silicon photonic circuits based on nano-electro-mechanical systems (NEMS). This offers efficient tunability by changing the effective refractive index of a suspended waveguide, enabling fast and compact phase-shifters and splitters for photonic integrated circuits such as switching-networks [arXiv:2204.14257 (2022)]. It further enables compact and low-cost telecom delay-lines and I will present the main application of my PhD developing a chip-scale NEMS spectrometer. In the last part of my talk I will discuss additional applications of this high-resolution nanofabrication within phononics [Nat. Nanotechnol. 17, 947-951 (2022)], and photonic topological insulators [arXiv:2206.11741].

Marcus is a PhD student at the Technical University of Denmark and has a BSc in Physics from the University of Bath in England (2017) and an MSc from the University of Copenhagen (2019). He works on the design, fabrication, and characterization of nano-electro-mechancial silicon photonics, focusing on high-resolution silicon nanofabrication and the novel physics that can be explored when pushing the fabrication frontier. Marcus has worked with complex mask design and electron-beam lithography for more than 6 years since early in his BSc, both in academic projects and later as a software developer in the startup company Beamfox Proximity.

How to design a nanostructure with prescribed transport properties? While several topology optimization methods have been developed for macroscale scenarios, they can’t be readily applied to nanoscale devices. When the feature size of the material becomes comparable with the particles’ mean-free path, flux becomes nondiffusive, and a momentum-resolved model is needed. On the other side, standard material interpolation methods, such as SIMP, are mainly applied to averaged quantities, such as the local thermal conductivity. In this talk, I will discuss the “Transmission Interpolation Method” (TIM), a novel approach we recently developed to overcome this limitation. Instead of parametrizing the material distribution in terms of locally resolved variables, TIM acts on the interfacial flux, linking the material density with fictitious particle transmission. The talk will show the application of TIM to two examples: Tuning the effective thermal conductivity tensor of a nanostructure and maximizing phonon size effects. I will conclude the talk with final remarks and future developments. 

Giuseppe Romano is a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research integrates multiscale modeling, machine-learning, and high-performance computing to accelerate the discovery of energy materials. Recent focus includes the inverse design of devices for photovoltaic and thermoelectric applications. He is the PI/co-PI of projects funded by the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab and NASA. He is the developer of OpenBTE, an open-source software for simulating nanoscale thermal transport in arbitrary geometries, and coordinated the development of ∂PV, a differentiable solar cell simulator. In 2019, he was a Distinguished Visiting Scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and in the Fall of 2018, he was a visiting scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab. He joined MIT in 2010 after receiving his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Rome Tor Vergata.

In this talk, I will present our group’s efforts in developing chip-scale tools for quantum state engineering in the time-frequency domain. I will present our current work dealing with nanophotonic devices designed to generate frequency entangled photons and employ active time domain control to steer their time evolution. I will show how such a process can implement an analog quantum simulator and show simulations of rudimentary condensed matter phenomena. I will further discuss proposals for how this system can be scaled to generate multi-photon cluster states for one-way computation.

Usman Javid is a Ph.D. student in the Qiang Lin group at the University of Rochester. His research deals with chip-sale nonlinear and quantum photonics with applications geared towards optical quantum simulation and computation.

Photonic crystal fibres (PCF) consist of a microstructured cladding of periodically arranged air-channels surrounding the core region. They are an ideal platform for all sort of nonlinear optics experiments ought to the possibility to adjust nonlinearity and dispersion. These parameters are easily adjustable at the fabrication stage. Alternatively, pressurizing the fibre is a good way to modify online the dispersion landscape so as to ensure the phase-matching conditions required for a particular effect. We will present in this talk several experiments using pressure-assisted nonlinear optics for the generation of quantum optics sources. First, we will show broadly tunable photon-pair generation in a suspended core fibre that we filled with argon gas [Phys. Rev. Res., 2, 012079 (2020)]. When the hollow-core fibre is filled with noble gas i.e., monatomic, the fluid serves as the gain medium. Not only we can then adjust the dispersion landscape of the fibre but we can even prevent the Raman scattering originating from random molecular vibrations, that yields unwanted noise and degrades the quality of the fibre-based sources. Such a versatile system is becoming a promising platform in quantum optics as it allows the generation of frequency tunable pairs of photons through four-wave mixing or modulational instability [PRA 95, 053814 (2017)]. We will show in this presentation the creation of correlated photon pairs with frequency separation up to over an octave [Opt. Lett. 46, 4033 (2021)]. By contrast, we will see that if a coherent pattern of molecular vibrations is first prepared, stimulated Raman scattering can be utilized within its lifetime for thresholdless conversion of single photons, provided certain phase-matching conditions are fulfilled. We recently demonstrated frequency up-conversion of single photon by 125 THz, while preserving the correlation of the original entangled pair [Science, 376, 621 (2022)]. Finally, we will discuss the latest advances on the generation of triplet states, which can be regarded as the reverse process of the generation of third harmonic.

Nicolas Joly is an associate professor at the University of Nüremberg-Erlangen, where he works on photonic crystal fibers. He is also the head of the "microstructured optical fibres" research group at the Max-Planck Institute for the Science of light in Erlangen. His domain of research includes nonlinear optics as well as quantum-optics in PCF. In particular he is very interested in the nonlinear generation of new frequencies like supercontinuum generation or the generation of non-classical states of light using PCF.

Metasurfaces and low-dimensional materials have been developing as two important candidates in the interfacial engineering, providing a plethora of new possibilities in novel optoelectronic functions and applications. The synergies between those two domains hold great promises in manipulating light-matter interaction. In this talk, I will start from reviewing and reporting some of the most recent developments in plasmonic and dielectric metasurfaces, and then focus on how monolayer TMDC and layered 2D materials could be hybridized with classic metasurfaces to modulate and structure novel light behavior, such as zero-dark-current and bipolar semimetal photodetector, monolayer meta-lens of atomic thickness, hybrid designs with enhanced SHG, PL, and tunable structural colors, by the coordinated hybridization between those two parties. Finally, we will elaborate our new breakthrough on van der Waals polaritonic metasurfaces, as a new roadmap toward ultra-low loss, long-range propagation, topological interfaces, and tailorable on-chip integrated functional devices.

Prof. Cheng-Wei Qiu was appointed Dean’s Chair Professor twice (2017-2020 & 2020-2023) in Faculty of Engineering, NUS. He was Fellow of The Electromagnetics Academy, US. He is well known for his research in structured light and interfaces. He has published over 400 peer-reviewed journal papers. He was the recipient of the SUMMA Graduate Fellowship in Advanced Electromagnetics in 2005, IEEE AP-S Graduate Research Award in 2006, URSI Young Scientist Award in 2008, NUS Young Investigator Award in 2011, MIT TR35@Singapore Award in 2012, Young Scientist Award by Singapore National Academy of Science in 2013, Faculty Young Research Award in NUS 2013, SPIE Rising Researcher Award 2018, Young Engineering Research Award 2018, and Engineering Researcher Award 2021 in NUS, and World Scientific Medal 2021 by Institute of Physics, Singapore. He was Highly Cited Researchers in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 by Web of Science. He has been serving in Associate Editor for various journals such as JOSA B, PhotoniX, Photonics Research, and Editor-in-Chief for eLight. He also serves in Editorial Advisory Board for Laser and Photonics Review, Advanced Optical Materials, and ACS Photonics.

Photonic quantum information processing is a type of information processing based on the principles of quantum optics. Continuous-variable (CV) quantum information of photons underpins a variety of quantum sensing and communication applications. Various of these quantum applications involve the generation and distribution of the two-mode squeezed vacuum (TMSV) state photons. My research topics cover these important subjects and can be divided into three parts. First, I theoretically proposed an integrated photonic platform for the generation of TMSV photons and experimentally fabricated the structure on the chip to successfully carry out these TMSV photons on the chip. This part is compatible with complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology and paves the road of mass production of quantum integrated photonic platforms. Second, I theoretically proposed a CV quantum repeater architecture with the assistance of quantum error correction (QEC) and optical Gottesman-Kitaev-Perskill (GKP) state to realize long-haul entanglement establishment with high fidelity. To prove its usefulness, I applied these protocols on two representative use cases for quantum communication and sensing. Once optical GKP states with sufficient squeezing become available, the proposed QR architecture will enable CV quantum states to be faithfully transmitted over unprecedented distances, thereby making a large stride forward in the development of quantum technology. Finally, I theoretically proposed a quantum-radar scheme by transmitting the pulse-compression microwave field for investigating the direction of a distant object with higher sensitivity than the classical counterpart. This work generalizes the previous results in quantum radar ranging in [Phys. Rev. Lett. 128, 010501 (2022)] towards a general quantum radar detection system capable of detecting various properties of targets.

Bo-Han Wu is currently a Physics PhD candidate at the University of Arizona in the US and received his MS degree in National Tsing Hua University and BS degree in National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan. He has a broad interest in quantum information science that covers both theory and experiment. During his PhD experiment study, he designed, fabricated and tested the photonic chip to generate the on-chip continuous-variable (CV) entangled photon; In his PhD theory study, he proposed a protocol of CV quantum repeater to distribute long-distance entanglement and a quantum radar scheme to interrogate the direction of an distant unknown object with experimentally feasible parameters. During his MS study, he was experienced in theoretical modeling of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) based quantum memory in cold atomic system.

Given its potential for integration and scalability, silicon is likely to be a key platform for large-scale quantum technologies. Individual artificial atoms, formed by impurities, have emerged as a promising solution for silicon-based integrated quantum circuits. However, single qubits featuring an optical interface, which is needed for long-distance information exchanges, have never been studied for quantum technology applications. In the first part of the talk, I will introduce light-emitting centers that were initially found after the irradiation of silicon. A center known as the G-center, composed of two carbon atoms bound to the same silicon atom, has been extensively studied in the ’60s due to its relatively high brightness [1]. We performed time, and temperature-dependent photoluminescence measurements of an ensemble of color centers in annealed-heavily carbon implanted commercial silicon followed by proton irradiation. We revealed the fast recombination dynamics of the exited state [2] and a slower decay time due to the presence of an excited metastable state potentially originating from a triplet spin state. In the second part, I will report the isolation of single optically active point defects from low fluence carbon implanted silicon. These artificial atoms exhibit a bright, linearly polarized single-photon emission with a quantum efficiency of the order of unity [3]. This single-photon emission occurs at telecom wavelengths suitable for long-distance propagation in optical fibers. We also report the detection of individual emitters in silicon belonging to seven different families of optically active point defects [4]. Our results show that silicon can accommodate single isolated optical point defects despite a small bandgap (1.1 eV). This discovery paves the way for quantum optical networks and quantum photonic chips using fully integrated all-silicon devices. References: [1] L. W. Song, et al., Phys. Rev. B 42, 5765 [2] C. Beaufils, W. Redjem et al. Phys. Rev. B 97, 035303 [3] Redjem, W., Durand, A., Herzig, T., et al. Single artificial atoms in silicon emitting at telecom wavelengths. Nat Electron 3, 738–743 (2020) [4] A. Durand, Y. Baron, W. Redjem, et al. Rev. Lett. 126, 083602

Dr. Walid Redjem completed his master’s degree in quantum devices from Ecole normale Superieure and the University of Paris Diderot in 2016. He then joined the University of Montpellier in France as a Ph.D. student, working on silicon-integrated quantum light sources. He discovered single artificial atoms in silicon that emit single photons in the telecommunication wavelengths. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow in Boubacar Kante’s group at the University of California, Berkeley, in the EECS department. He is developing new types of classical and quantum light sources based on topological photonics. He is the co-inventor of the scalable open-Dirac surface-emitting laser.

In my talk I will introduce polycyclic aromatic dye molecules as two-level quantum emitters and will review the recent advances of our group in controlling and manipulating their light-matter interaction by shaping their nanoenviroment. A special focus will be given on my PhD work dealing with the coupling of organic molecules to chip-based nanophotonic circuits. Here, I will discuss the coupling of individual molecules to one-dimensional subwavelength waveguides and the prospects of realizing coupled emitter ensembles by DC-Stark tuning of the molecular resonances. Furthermore, I will demonstrate that the sensitivity of the molecules to electric fields can be used to sense fields in their nanoenviroment. The specific example will be weak charge fluctuations in a gallium phosphide waveguide. I will present a series of experiments that reveal the spatial and temporal correlations of the electric field and show that the temporal correlation scales proportionally with the optical intensity. In the quest for reaching near deterministic coupling efficiencies, I will introduce ring- and disc-resonators and show the Purcell-enhanced coupling of single molecules to these structures. With our most recent design, a 6 µm diameter disk resonator, I will demonstrate a resonator finesse up to 250 (Q=16000), leading to coupling efficiency of 75%. Furthermore, I will show the controlled manipulation and tuning of molecular resonances via nearby microelectrodes and the simultaneous coupling of two individual molecules to the two counter propagating modes of the disc.

Dominik Rattenbacher studied physics in the "Physics Advanced Program" at the Universities of Erlangen and Regensburg from 2013 to 2018. After a research stay at the Ultrafast and Attosecond Science group of Prof. Hans Jakob Wörner at ETH Zurich, he did his Master thesis on "Spectroscopic investigation of two molecules coupled via a dielectric waveguide" in the Division of Vahid Sandoghdar at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light. His PhD work is a direct continuation of this project and aims at coupling several molecules efficiently via nanophotonic circuits.

Single organic molecules in the solid-state are one of the promising optical platforms for realizing quantum networks owing to their remarkable coherent properties and flexibility in their chemical synthesis [1]. Specifically, their Fourier-limited zero-phonon line transitions at liquid helium temperatures provide bright single-photons and nonlinear interactions at the few-photon levels. However, the molecular excited states typically decay in the order of nanoseconds. This limits quantum coherence in these systems and emission rate of single photons, posing a challenge for practical applications in quantum technologies. In the first part of this talk, I will focus on the inherent optomechanical character of organic molecules in the solid-state for achieving long-lived quantum coherence in these systems. I will present a scheme consists of a single organic molecule in host matrix with a structured phononic environment [2]. By suppressing phononic decay channels, we realize and exploit long optomechanical coherence times up to milliseconds for storing and retrieving information. I will demonstrate that the resulting long-lived vibrational states facilitate reaching the strong optomechanical regime at the single photon level. In the second part, I will address light-matter interaction of a quantum emitter. It is a common practice to use cavities or plasmonic nanoantennas to increase light-matter interaction via Purcell effect. I will show that by hybridizing those two systems, the emission rate of an emitter can be enhanced with respect to the individual systems [3]. More importantly, the resulting cavity-induced radiative coupling can dominate the nonradiative channels in the near field of the plasmonic nanoantenna. I will further discuss the promise of reaching single-molecule strong coupling regime by using the proposed hybrid photonic structure. Lastly, I will show how to translate similar ideas to magnetic light-matter interactions by using atomic arrays [4]. Our results pave the way of molecular quantum networks, bright single photon sources, coherent light-matter interactions and quantum optomechanical applications with molecules. 1. C. Toninelli et al., Nat. Mater. 20, 1615–1628 (2021). 2. B. Gurlek et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 123603 (2021). 3. B. Gurlek et al, ACS Photonics 5, 456 (2018). 4. R. Alaee et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 063601 (2020).

Burak Gurlek obtained his B.Sc. degree both in Telecommunication Engineering and Mathematics with summa cum laude from the Istanbul Technical University. He then moved to Polytechnique Montreal to work on non-reciprocal metamaterials for his master thesis. He is currently a Ph.D. student in the group of Prof. Vahid Sandoghdar at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light. He won numerous awards including Ord. Prof. Bedri Karafakioglu award from the Istanbul Technical University. In his Ph.D., Burak worked on hybrid cavity-nanoantenna systems for coherent light-matter interfaces and theory of single molecule spectroscopy. His work also focuses on improving optomechanical qualities of single organic molecules for quantum information. His current research interests lie in molecular quantum optics, engineering molecular interactions, atomic arrays and artificial scientific discovery.

Single photons and their interaction with quantum emitters are key components of quantum information protocols, finding applications in quantum communication and quantum simulation. Self-assembled InAs quantum dots (QDs) embedded in pin-GaAs membrane present excellent optical properties, and their integration within planar photonic nanostructures ensures near-deterministic light-matter interaction. Further scaling of this platform requires an efficient strategy to operate multiple single-photon sources (SPS) simultaneously. In this talk, we will present a way to tackle this challenge by demonstrating the scalable operation of multiple SPSs using a specially designed nanophotonic circuit. We realize simultaneous resonant excitation of two QDs positioned in separate dual-mode waveguides and demonstrate their independent Stark tuning with electrical biases. The low-noise properties of QDs together with the individual control of their energy is highlighted by two-photon quantum interference measurement. This work promotes the fully waveguide-based approach towards the scalable operation of deterministic SPSs for various quantum information application. The realized strategy can be applied to other quantum nanophotonic platforms.

I’m currently a PhD student in the Quantum Photonics group at the Niels Bohr Institute, in Copenhagen. During my 3-years research, I put my effort in expanding the scalability of the planar quantum photonic platform towards direct quantum information applications. This builds up on my prior Msc. project, focused on the nanofabrication and characterization of on-chip single-photon router based on nano-electro-mechanical switches, followed by one-year research assistant position, dedicated to outcoupling and efficiency of planar nanostructures.

Spin qubits in solid-state systems are strong contenders for quantum communication, computation and metrology. In this seminar I will introduce two such systems I have studied and their application in room-temperature quantum sensing and spin-photon interfaces. Temperature plays a critical role in all chemical reactions in cells and understanding intracellular temperature variations is crucial for biochemical energetics. In addition, rheology is an integral part of cell morphology, division and transport. It is actively regulated by cells in response to temperature. Despite its importance, intracellular thermometry remains challenging, often obscured by the noise due to local biochemical environments. In the first part of the talk, I will illustrate the dual modal quantum sensor based on NV centres in nanodiamonds, which are capable of simultaneously sensing nanoscale temperature and rheology in viscoelastic fluids and a dynamic cellular environment. This technique offers new avenues for understanding intracellular energetics. Next, I will focus on optically addressable single spin defects in two-dimensional (2d) hexagonal boron nitride (hBN). Spin defects in 2d layered materials offer advantages over their bulk counterparts, as their reduced dimensionality enables more feasible on-chip integration into devices. I will report the first room-temperature optically detected magnetic resonance (ODMR) from single carbon-related defects in hexagonal boron nitride. I will show that either positive or negative ODMR signal is observed for each defect. Based on kinematic models, we relate this bipolarity to highly tuneable internal optical rates. In addition, we resolve an ODMR fine structure in the form of an angle-dependent doublet resonance, indicative of weak but finite zero-field splitting. Our results offer a promising route towards realising a room-temperature spin-photon quantum interface in hexagonal boron nitride.

Dr Qiushi Gu received his BA and MSci degrees from the University of Cambridge, UK. He subsequently joined Mete Atature’s group and obtained his PhD in Physics degree in 2022. His work focuses on using spin manipulation techniques for quantum sensing and information processing. Gu worked with NV centres in nanodiamonds for nanoscale NMR experiments and intracellular temperature and rheology sensing. He also identified the first room-temperature ODMR signatures for single spins in hexagonal boron nitride. His research interest lies in optically addressable quantum systems and their manipulation.

Colloidal semiconductor quantum dots (CQDs) have been considered as a promising material platform for the realization of solution-processed lasers. In addition to wide range spectral tunability thanks to quantum confinement, CQDs offer other interesting properties for lasing applications including atomic-like discrete energy levels and chemical stability, making them compatible with any arbitrary substrate and optical cavities [1]. However, CQD-lasers have suffered severely from poor gain performances, making them impractical for feasible daily-life applications. The fundamental limitations of the CQDs as a gain medium arise from non-unity degeneracy of the band-edge state [1]. Then, to achieve light amplification, at least some of the CQDs must contain more than one exciton. An additional complication is associated with nonradiative Auger recombination, whereby the electron–hole recombination energy is transferred to a third carrier. This results in Therefore, the low-threshold CQD-lasers at room temperature are essentially needed. In the first part of the talk, I will discuss about the infrared lasers based on Pb-chalcogenide CQDs. Room-temperature tunable emission infrared lasers are achieved by integrating Pb CQDs to the distributed feedback cavity (DFB) [2]. By engineering the Auger process in PbS CQDs at the supra-nanocrystalline level, we achieved low threshold highly stable single-mode infrared DFB-laser [3]. Our recent result show that using heterostructured Pb-chalcogenide core/shell CQDs allows us to achieve sub-single-exciton laser for the first time in an infrared CQD materials [4]. Additionally, I will talk about our dual functional device which operates as infrared light emitting diode and laser under electrical- and optical-excitation, respectively [5]. In the second part of my talk, I will present my research activities in realization of highly-efficient visible-emitting CQD-lasers. In doing so, we have designed and developed a heterostructure of CdSe-based CQDs, which led us to achieve record lowest gain/lasing threshold among all semiconductor nanocrystals [6]. Additionally, we showed red-emitting multi-mode lasers which obtained by coupling these engineered CQDs heterostructure to a core-less optical fiber, in which lasing modes supported by whispering-gallery-mode resonator [7]. References: 1. Y. Park et al., Nature review materials, 6, 382–401 (2021) 2. G. L. Whitworth et al., Nature Photonics , 15, 738-742 (2021) 3. N. Taghipour et al., Advanced Materials 34 (3), 2107532 (2022) 4. N. Taghipour et al., under review 5. N. Taghipour et al., Advanced Functional Materials, 220832 (2022) 6. N. Taghipour et al. Nature Communication, 11, 3305 (2020) 7. M. Sak, N. Taghipour et al., Advanced Functional Materials, 3, 1907417 (2020)

Nima Taghipour is a PREBIST Marie Curie Ph.D. fellow at ICFO-Institute of Photonics Sciences, working in Functional Optoelectronics Nanomaterials under the supervision of professor Gerasimos Konstantatos. Prior to joining ICFO, Nima worked in UNAM-National Nanotechnology Center in the Quantum Devices and Sensors group as a postgraduate researcher at Bilkent University, Turkey. He received his B.Sc. in Electronics Engineering and his M.Sc. in Photonics Engineering in the same department at Tabriz university, Iran. Nima's research is understanding excitonic properties of low-dimensional quantum confined materials including colloidal semiconductor quantum -dots, -wells and two-dimensional semiconductors. He uses these nanomaterials to develop novel light-detection and light-emitting devices especially lasers. After being awarded the COFUND PREBIST Ph.D. fellowship under the Marie-Curie action on a proposal entitled “Optical Gain and Lasing in Infrared Colloidal Quantum Dots”, he joined ICFO to pursue his Ph.D. degree. His current research focuses on the lasing action of colloidal semiconductor quantum dot (CQDs) in the telecommunication band. The objective of his Ph.D. study is the demonstration of highly-performed infrared lasers based on CQDs.

In optimization theory, one clear dividing line between "easy" and "hard" problems is convexity. Convex optimization problems do not have local optima that are not global optima, and multiple decades of development have led to efficient computational machinery for solving convex problems. By contrast, nonconvex problems can have highly oscillatory landscapes, and one must typically use local optimization techniques or black-box algorithms. Nanophotonic design problems, and many design problems across physics, reside squarely in the latter category of nonconvex optimization problems. Or do they? I will show that there is a surprising amount of mathematical structure hidden in the typical differential equations of physics, and that this structure enables new connections to modern techniques in convex optimization. I will describe how the key constraints in these design problems can be transformed from the typical differential-equation descriptions to infinite sets of local conservation laws, and that the latter have a structure amenable to quadratic and semidefinite programming. I describe how this approach can lead to global bounds ("fundamental limits") for many design problems of interest, and potentially to dramatically new approaches to identifying designs themselves. Next, specific to electromagnetic scattering, I will describe a unique construction of scattering matrices that leads to new methods for identifying fundamental limits across any bandwidth of interest. Throughout I will emphasize novel applications where we have applied these techniques, including: minimal-thickness perfect absorbers, scaling laws for analog photonics, speed limits in quantum optimal control, and a new theory of the ultimate limits of near-field radiative heat transfer.

Owen Miller is an Asst. Prof. of Applied Physics and Physics at Yale. His research interests center around developing large-scale computational and analytical design techniques for discovering novel structures and new phenomena in nanophotonics. He is the recipient of AFOSR and DARPA young investigator awards, as well as the Yale Graduate Mentor award.

Does quantum mechanics have anything useful to contribute to technology development in high-precision classical sensing? For quantitative sensing tasks in many application spaces, modeling the light collected by an optical sensor as a quantum state is a powerful theoretical avenue for evaluating how precisely the task could be carried out if the sensor is allowed to make any measurements that obey the laws of physics. Focusing on far-field super-resolution imaging, I will discuss how such a quantum information-theoretic framework has led us at the University of Arizona and others to develop "quantum-inspired" techniques that provably approach or achieve the upper limits on imaging precision that nature allows (such as the quantum Cramer-Rao bound on parameter estimation or the quantum Chernoff bound on object discrimination) while yielding large fundamental improvements over conventional resolution limits. I will highlight our theoretical and experimental progress in pushing these insights beyond toy problems and into the realm of useful real-world imaging needs, with applications in super-resolution microscopy, astronomy, and remote sensing.

Michael R Grace is a graduating PhD student working with Professor Saikat Guha at the University of Arizona College of Optical Sciences. He has a background in classical and quantum physics and diffractive optics as well as experience in experimental super-resolution microscopy. His current research interests include optical sensing, quantum information theory, and optical machine learning.

Realizing a strong photon-photon coupling is a central goal in quantum nonlinear optics, holding a promise, e.g., for single-photon nonlinear optics and deterministic optical quantum computation. While bulk nonlinear optics offers a scalable and room-temperature solution, requirements for nonlinearity and loss are extremely demanding, which have not been realized to this date. In this talk, we propose a novel route to all-optical strong coupling: ultrashort pulses on dispersion engineered nanophotonics. In addition to the transverse field confinement provided by the waveguide, ultrashort pulses form “flying cavities” that enjoy tight longitudinal confinement, significantly enhancing the nonlinear coupling. In this regime, however, strong nonlinearity inevitably induces multimode non-Gaussian quantum dynamics that naïvely require an exponentially large Hilbert space. To this, we introduce our recent developments in model reduction techniques, i.e., approaches with matrix-product states and non-Gaussians supermode model, which enables us to numerically understand the nonlinear quantum dynamics of photons beyond conventional semiclassical (i.e., linearized) treatments. We then present a novel “temporal trapping” scheme to harness the multimode nature of quantum pulses, which we can leverage to construct, e.g., a deterministic photon-photon gate. State of the art in thin-film lithium niobate waveguides suggests that we are, in principle, already in the strong coupling regime using ultrashort pulses, and we expect our work to provide a generic framework to understand and engineer the rich but complicated dynamics of broadband photons on this unique frontier. References [1] R. Yanagimoto, R. Hamerly et al., “Temporal trapping of ultrashort pulses enables deterministic optical quantum computation”, arXiv:2203.11909. [2] R. Yanagimoto, E. Ng et al., “Onset of non-Gaussian quantum physics in pulsed squeezing with mesoscopic fields”, Optica 9, 379 (2022). [3] R. Yanagimoto et al., “Efficient simulation of ultrafast quantum nonlinear optics with matrix product states”, Optica 8, 1306 (2021). [4] R. Yanagimoto, T. Onodera et al., “Engineering a Kerr-Based Deterministic Cubic Phase Gate via Gaussian Operations”, Phys. Rev. Lett. 124, 240503 (2020).

Ryotatsu Yanagimoto is a senior Ph.D. student in the group of Prof. Hideo Mabuchi at Stanford University. His research interest spans AMO physics in general, while he focuses on the science of quantum devices at present. He currently works on the theoretical research of broadband non-Gaussian quantum optics, aiming at understanding and engineering coherent multimode dynamics of photons on nonlinear nanophotonics beyond the conventional framework of Gaussian quantum optics. Previously, he worked at the University of Tokyo and RIKEN on experimental research of optical lattice clocks, where he received a B.E. He is a recipient of a Masason fellowship and a Stanford Q-FARM Ph.D. fellowship.

Chemistry offers a unique approach to quantum information science, whereby we can harness the atomistic precision inherent in synthetic chemistry to create structurally precise, reproducible, and tunable units. By harnessing this minute control over the chemical environment we can design systems wherein we control the distance between spin centers, their intrinsic environment and their extrinsic environment. Specifically, this talk will focus on creating molecules that are analogues of NV centers which we dub molecular color centers. These molecules feature optical read-out of spin information and offer significant promise in the realm of sensing and potentially communication.

Danna Freedman is the F. G. Keyes Professor of Chemistry at MIT. She received her Undergraduate degree from Harvard University, and her Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley where she studied magnetic anisotropy in molecules. As a postdoc at MIT she engendered spin frustration in kagomé lattices to create quantum spin liquids. After completing her postdoctoral research at MIT, Danna moved to Northwestern University as an Assistant Professor, where she received tenure and was promoted to full professor. She recently moved to MIT as the F. G. Keyes Professor of Chemistry. Her laboratory’s research focuses on applying inorganic chemistry to address challenges in physics. Danna’s laboratory's research has been recognized by a number of awards including the ACS award in Pure Chemistry, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, and an NSF CAREER award.

Quantum Technology promises tremendous advances in information processing, communication, and sensing, but current implementations do not yet integrate all essential building blocks and neither scale to large system size. Here we focus on photonic approaches, which are a frontrunner for quantum communication applications but also hold promise for optical quantum computing, simulation, and remote sensing. We identify quantum light sources, nanophotonic circuit components and single-photon detectors as essential building blocks and show how these can be replicated in large numbers on semiconductor chips by leveraging modern nanotechnology. Lithographic techniques allow for integrating solid state single-photon sources into dielectric waveguides with high yield and tailor their emission characteristics using photonic crystal cavities. We show how photons supplied into on-chip networks can be processed using nanophotonic circuit elements, for which we introduce a novel reinforcement-learning-based inverse design technique that yields high-performance devices of minimal footprint. Waveguide-integrated superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) further satisfy the need for efficient on-chip detection capabilities. We realize SNSPDs in large numbers and combine leading performance parameters with efficient fiber optic interconnects, which we exploit for high-rate quantum key distribution. Progress towards integrating sources, circuits, and detectors on silicon chips will thus allow us to study systems aspects in complex quantum networks and expand current quantum technology capabilities.

Professor Carsten Schuck works at the Center for NanoTechnology (CeNTech), the Center for Soft Nanoscience (SoN) and the Physics Institute of the University of Münster (Germany). His academic activities focus on quantum technology and nanophotonics, in particular the integration of quantum emitters and superconducting single-photon detectors with nanophotonic circuits. Before his appointment as full professor (2021), he was an as Assistant Professor in Münster (2016), after a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University (USA) and work for ASML Research (The Netherlands). He studied physics in Hamburg, Munich, and Uppsala (Sweden) and obtained his PhD degree in Applied Physics for work with single-trapped ions at the Institute of Photonic Sciences, ICFO, in Barcelona (Spain). Prof. Schuck is the co-founder of Pixel Photonics, a start-up company that commercializes superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors.

We will discuss some recent ideas and developments on how plasmonics and machine learning can be employed to dramatically speed up quantum process to make them immune to decoherence and how they can significantly improve the performance of quantum photonics devices and systems. Our recent discovery of single-photon emitters in technologically important SiN platform will be also discussed.

Vladimir M. Shalaev, Scientific Director for Nanophotonics at Birck Nanotechnology Center and Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University, specializes in nanophotonics, plasmonics, optical metamaterials and quantum photonics. Prof. Shalaev has received several awards for his research in the field of nanophotonics and metamaterials, including the APS Frank Isakson Prize for Optical Effects in Solids, the Max Born Award of the Optical Society of America for his pioneering contributions to the field of optical metamaterials, the Willis E. Lamb Award for Laser Science and Quantum Optics, IEEE Photonics Society William Streifer Scientific Achievement Award, Rolf Landauer medal of the ETOPIM (Electrical, Transport and Optical Properties of Inhomogeneous Media) International Association, the UNESCO Medal for the development of nanosciences and nanotechnologies, and the OSA and SPIE Goodman Book Writing Award. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, APS, SPIE, MRS and OSA.

This talk is based on our recent experimental works on quantum controlling the center of mass degree of freedom of levitated solid-state systems - and the question whether these experiments could be extended to a regime in which one can probe the gravitational field generated by a delocalised quantum object. If possible, such "quantum Cavendish" experiments would not be described by our current theory of gravity. I will also use the time to show you what else we have been working on in Vienna during the last 24 months.

Markus Aspelmeyer is Professor of Physics at the University of Vienna and Scientific Director of the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) Vienna of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Here I will review few topics we are currently working on in the Nanoscience Laboratory of the University of Trento (http://nanolab.physics.unitn.it/). Specifically by using the silicon photonics platform we are working on non-hermitian photonics in taiji microresonators [1], on microresonator based time-delayed neural networks [2,3], on heralded single photon sources for MIR ghost spectroscopy [4] and on the use of single particle entanglement to produce self-testing quantum random number generators [5]. [1] Nonlinearity-induced reciprocity breaking in a single non-magnetic Taiji resonator arXiv:2101.06642 [2] Reservoir computing based on a silicon microring and time multiplexing for binary and analog operations arXiv:2101.01664 [3] Microring resonators with external optical feedback for time delay reservoir computing arXiv:2109.11486;A photonic complex perceptron for ultrafast data processing arXiv:2106.11050 [4] A silicon source of heralded single photons at 2 μm arXiv:2108.01031 [5] Certified quantum random number generator based on single-photon entanglement arXiv:2104.04452 Entropy certification of a realistic QRNG based on single-particle entanglement arXiv:2104.06092

Lorenzo Pavesi is Professor of Experimental Physics at the Department of Physics of the University of Trento (Italy). He leads the Nanoscience Laboratory and director of the Quantum at Trento joint laboratory. He has directed 37 PhD students and more than 30 Master thesis students. His research activity concerned the optical properties of semiconductors. During the last years, he concentrated on Silicon based photonics where he looks for the convergence between photonics and electronics. He is interested in active photonics devices which can be integrated in silicon. Recent development is toward integrated quantum photonics and neuromorphic photonics. He is an ERC grantee. He is a frequently invited reviewer, monitor or referee for photonics projects by several grant agencies. He is an author or co-author of more than 500 papers, author of several reviews, editor of more than 15 books, author of 2 books and holds 9 patents. He is chief speciality editor of the section Optics and Photonics of Frontiers in Physics and founding editor of the series Photonic Materials and Applications, a joint initiative of SPIE and Elsevier. He is in the advisory board of Glass-to-Power and of Sybilla, two italian start-up. In 2001 he was awarded the title of Cavaliere by the Italian President for scientific merit. In 2010 and 2011 he was elected distinguished speaker of the IEEE- Photonics society. He is fellow of the IEEE, of SPIE, of AAIA and of the SIF.

Nanophotonic resonances have seen a sustained interest because of their ability to enhance light-matter interactions, with recent developments such as metasurfaces and bound states in the continuum (BIC) adding interest to the topic. Researchers typically aim to maximise the Q-factor as a measure for the interaction; this is true for both light emission, where Q/V (V: Volume) is the key parameter, but also for sensing, where QxS (S: Sensitivity) is the usual figure of merit. Here, we show that this picture can be overly simplistic and that it is essential to take losses and the resonance amplitude into account. Using sensors as an example, we present an ab-initio model and show that the performance is not optimised by simply maximising the Q, but by counterbalancing Q and amplitude. We compare different structures in light of this model and demonstrate high-sensitivity biological measurements with structures that achieve moderate Q but high resonance amplitude.  

Prof Krauss achieved his first degree (“Diplom-Ingenieur”) in Cologne, Germany (1989), followed by a PhD in Electrical Engineering at Glasgow, UK 1992 on the topic of semiconductor ring lasers. He initiated the work on photonic crystals in the UK in 1993, a research field where he made pioneering contributions worldwide, spent a year at Caltech, Pasadena, CA in 1997 and became Professor of Physics at St Andrews, UK in 2000. He moved to the University of York, UK in 2012 to focus on light-matter interaction with biological systems, where he was also Strategy Champion “Technologies for the Future" 2015-2019. He has led major EU and UK research projects and currently holds a substantial research portfolio related to optical biosensors funded by EPSRC, the Wellcome Trust, and well supported by industry partners. His papers are well cited (h=90) and he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Institute of Physics and the Optical Society. He was one of the founding editors of OSA's flagship journal Optica in 2014 and became its Deputy Editor in early 2020.

As the demands and forms of computers evolve, new hardware is needed to realize different types of computing interfaces. Foundry silicon photonics leverages the maturity of microelectronics manufacturing to fabricate photonic integrated circuits. Today, silicon photonics is mostly used in the short-wave infrared spectrum for fiber optic communication. I will discuss how foundry silicon photonics in the visible spectrum can be an enabling technology for future computing, addressing applications such as displays, neural implants, and quantum computing.

Joyce Poon is the Managing Director at the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto, and an Honorary Professor in the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Technical University of Berlin. She currently serves as a Director-at-Large for Optica (formerly the Optical Society, OSA). She and her team specialize in integrated photonics on silicon. Prof. Poon obtained the Ph.D. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Caltech in 2007 and 2003 respectively, and the B.A.Sc. in Engineering Science (physics option) from the University of Toronto in 2002. Recognitions she has received include a Canada Research Chair (2012-2019), ECE Department Teaching Award (2017), OFC Top-Scored Paper (2017), the McCharles Prize for Early Research Career Distinction (2013), MIT TR35 (2012), and the IBM Faculty Award (2010, 2011). She is an Optica Fellow (formerly OSA).

High-order non-linear excitation of charge carriers in solids and gasses can be employed as a time gate for pulse waveform sampling. The temporal confinement of the event provides an attosecond temporal resolution and a petahertz detection bandwidth. The concept is applied to observe and control the optical properties of solids directly in the time domain. The light-matter-light pump-probe configuration allows using a sample medium and the injection pulse, to control and manipulate the test pulse waveform at ultrafast timescales. The encoded information is stored and can be further read out by a pulse waveform measurement, therefore making the light-matter-light interaction somewhat similar to the gate-drain-source transistor, but at ultrafast time-scales.

2016 – 2021 Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics / Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (Ph.D in physics with honors) Web: https://www.attoworld.de/research/atto.html https://www.mpq.mpg.de/employees/51556/4914518 Major: Ultrafast and attosecond physics in solids and gases Supervised by Dr. Nicholas Karpowicz and Prof. Ferenc Krausz Thesis referees: Prof. Ferenc Krausz, Prof. Mikhail (Misha) Ivanov, Prof. Immanuel Bloch, Prof. Joseph Mohr 2016 – 2021 International Max Planck Research School for Advanced Photon Science (Ph.D in physics with honors) Web: http://www2.mpq.mpg.de/APS/ PhD Student. Munich, Germany Major: Ultrafast and attosecond physics in solids and gases 2014 – 2016 Ruhr-University-Bochum / University of Hamburg, Germany (M.Sc in lasers and photonics with honors) Web: https://www.physik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/ https://ufox.cfel.de/ Major: Non-linear Optics, Solid State Physics Thesis: “Strong field interactions of solids with Infrared and terahertz radiation” Supervised by Prof. Franz Kaertner and Prof. Evgeny Gurevich Ultrafast Optics and X-Rays Division, Center For Free Electron Laser Science (DESY) Hamburg, Germany 2012 – 2016 Additional modules taken from various institutions (Average grade 93%) Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, University of Hamburg, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron, Center For Free Electron Laser Science, University of Strasbourg, Dortmund University of Technology, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences Major: Physics, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science 2005 – 2010 Togliatti State University, Togliatti, Russia (Diploma with average grade 87%) Web: http://www.tltsu.ru/international/English/about-us.php Major: Physics, Material Science, Mechanics ASSOCIATION: 11/2016 – present Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics. Garching b. Munich, Germany Department: Attosecond Physics (Prof. Ferenc Krausz) Doktorand 04/2016 – 11/2016 Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY). Hamburg, Germany Department: CFEL, Ultrafast Optics and X-Rays (Prof. Dr. Franz X. Kärtner) Research Assistant (Strong field interaction of light with solids) https://desy.cfel.de/ultrafast_optics_and__x_rays_division/ 09/2015 – 03/2016 Ruhr-University-Bochum, Bochum, Germany Department: Experimentalphysik IV, Solid State Physics (Prof. Dr. Beatriz Roldan Cuenya) Research Assistant (Research in X-ray diffraction) http://www.ep4.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/ https://www.mpg.de/11384853/fritz_haber_institut_cuenya-beatriz-roldan 07/2015 – 09/2015: Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY). Hamburg, Germany Department: Photon Science Research Assistant (Research in non-linear optics. HHG from gas/solids) http://photon-science.desy.de/ 02/2015 – 03/2016 Ruhr-University-Bochum, Bochum, Germany Department: Photonics and Terahertz Technology (Prof. Dr. Martin Hofmann) Research Assistant (Research in non-linear optics) http://www.ptt.rub.de/ 03/2014 – 09/2014 University of Hamburg / Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY). Hamburg, Germany Department: Institut für Experimentalphysik, Femtosecond X-ray physics (Prof. Dr. Markus Drescher) Research Assistant (Optical research for HHG experiments) http://dynamix.desy.de/ 01/2014 – 09/2014 NXP Semiconductors (Former Phillips). Hamburg, Germany Department: Systems and Applications (Dirk Besenbruch) Assistant (Electronics development) http://www.nxp.com/ 10/2013 – 02/2014 Hamburg University of Applied Sciences. Hamburg, Germany Department: Information and Electrical Engineering (Prof. Dr.-Ing. Lutz Leutelt) Tutor https://www.haw-hamburg.de/ti-ie/ AWARDS, SCHOLARSHIPS, OTHER: • “Top university graduates 2016”. Ruhr University. Bochum, Germany • Award in International High School Mathematical Competition. Saint Petersburg, Russia • Russian State Scholarship for Especially Committed University Students. Togliatti, Russia • Award of university olympiad in descriptive geometry. Togliatti, Russia • 6 months student exchange program participant. New York, USA • Member of SPIE Students Chapter • PhD representative at Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, Germany (2019 - 2020)

Entanglement is one of the most fascinating aspects of quantum mechanics and an indispensable resource for emerging quantum technologies. Properly engineered semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) are capable of emitting highly entangled photon pairs with ultra-low multi-pair emission probability even at maximum brightness. In this seminar, we will discuss the structural and optical properties of QDs based on the (Al)GaAs material platform followed by their use in entanglement-based quantum key distribution. For a proof of principle, the quantum key generation was performed between two buildings of the JKU campus at a rate of about 130 bits/s. By embedding the QDs in state-of-the-art photonic structures, key generation rates in the hundreds of Mbit/s range are at reach.

Prof. Armando Rastelli heads the Semiconductor Physics Division of the Johannes Kepler University of Linz, Austria since 2012. He obtained his PhD in Physics from the University of Pavia, Italy, in 2003. During his PhD he was research assistant at the ETH Zürich, Switzerland, and Marie-Curie-Fellow at the Technical University of Tampere, Finland. From 2003 to 2007 he was first Postdoc and then group leader at the Max-Planck-Institute of Stuttgart, Germany, and then at the Leibniz Institute of Dresden, Germany. In 2019 he was elected corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Throughout his career, he has been developing new methods to obtain, study, and control epitaxial quantum dots. The main current focus is on the optimization of quantum dots as quantum light sources for applications in photonic quantum technologies. He is coauthor of more than 230 peer-reviewed papers and has given more than 100 invited talks on the research activities of his group.

Feedforward photonic optical circuits or meshes of programmable interferometers have recently been successfully demonstrated for potential in commercial applications ranging from sensing to machine learning to quantum computation. In this talk, I describe how to program and calibrate any feedforward circuit in presence of error via self-configuration. Incorporating this programming approach, I compare phase shift tolerance, loss tolerance, and fabrication error sensitivity as a function of circuit size and topology given an interferometer design. Our simulations and theory show that for a fixed circuit size, interfering modes in widely spaced (nonlocally interacting) waveguides increases error tolerance by orders of magnitude compared to interfering only modes in neighboring waveguides. Our results also explain why, in signal processing and sensing applications, this error-tolerant class of circuits can potentially scale fast Fourier transform, permutations, and low-rank matrix-vector products to thousands of input modes with minimal reduction in systematic error. Finally, I will present preliminary experimental results on a 4x4 mode photonic circuit to demonstrate a minimal example of programmable optics.

Sunil Pai received the B.S. degree in physics and the M.S. degree in computer science from Stanford University in 2015 and 2016, respectively. He is currently a Ph.D. Student in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University studying photonic networks, coadvised by Olav Solgaard, David A.B. Miller, and Shanhui Fan. His research interests include machine learning, photonics, and quantum optics.

Silicon photonic manufacturing has opened possibilities for new concepts in optical information science. Neural networks have proliferated throughout machine learning applications, but electronic implementations are reaching performance limits. Neuromorphic photonics is the pursuit of a bridge between photonic physics and neuromorphic applications. This talk addresses fundamentals and current status: what makes a device neuromorphic; what applications are promising?

Alex Tait is an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Queen's University, Kingston, ON, Canada. He was a NRC postdoctoral fellow in the Quantum Nanophotonics and Faint Photonics Group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Boulder, CO, USA. He received his PhD in the Lightwave Communications Research Laboratory, Department of Electrical Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA under the direction of Paul Prucnal. His research interests include silicon photonics, neuromorphic engineering, and superconducting optoelectronics. Dr. Tait is a recipient of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship (GRFP) and is a member of the IEEE Photonics Society and the Optical Society of America (OSA). He is the recipient of the Award for Excellence from the Princeton School of Engineering and Applied Science, the Best Student Paper Award from the 2016 IEEE Summer Topicals Meeting Series, and the Class of 1883 Writing Prize from the Princeton Department of English. He has authored 15 refereed journal papers, (co)filed 8 provisional patents, created 7 open-source software packages, and contributed to the textbook Neuromorphic Photonics.

An ensemble of coherently interacting spins can host spectacular examples of spontaneous and driven quantum many-body phases, such as superradiance and time crystals. Further, if one can access coherently the quanta of such ensembles they can be exploited for quantum computational tasks and for the storage of quantum information in collective modes of the ensemble—a quantum memory. In semiconductor quantum dots, a single electron spin is a coherent interface to an isolated ensemble of nuclear spins. In an optically active quantum dot system, we have used all-optical techniques to show (i) coherent injection of nuclear spin-waves [1], (ii) sensing of a coherent single nuclear-spin excitation [2], and (iii) the presence of nuclear entanglement as a dark many-body state [3]. Combined with the exquisite quantum optical properties of quantum dots, these results open a new avenue for state engineering of a mesoscopic ensemble of spins connected to single photons, as promising towards quantum simulation, computation, and communication. [1] Gangloff et al. (2019), Science 364 [2] Jackson et al. (2021), Nat. Phys. 17 (5) [3] Gangloff et al. (2021), Nat. Phys. (In press)

Dorian Gangloff got his PhD in Physics at MIT in 2016, working in the group of Prof. Vladan Vuletic on simulations of nano-friction with ultracold trapped ions. Since then, he has been a postdoctoral research fellow at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, working in the group of Prof. Mete Atature on quantum information science with solid-state spins in semiconductors. In October 2021, he will begin a principal investigator position as a Royal Society University Research Fellow, and will start his own group in the department of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford in January 2022.

The field of artificial intelligence (AI) has experienced major developments over the last decade. Within AI, of particular interest is the paradigm of reinforcement learning (RL), where autonomous agents learn to accomplish a given task via feedback exchange with the world they are placed in, called an environment. Thanks to impressive advances in quantum technologies, the idea of using quantum physics to boost the performance of RL agents has been recently drawing the attention of many scientists. In my talk I will focus on the bridge between RL and quantum mechanics, and show how RL has proven amenable to quantum enhancements. I will provide an overview of the most recent results — for example, the development of agents deciding faster on their next move [1] — and I will then focus on how the learning time of an agent can be reduced using quantum physics. I will show that such a reduction can be achieved and quantified only if the agent and the environment can also interact quantum-mechanically, that is, if they can communicate via a quantum channel [2]. This idea has been implemented on a quantum platform that makes use of single photons as information carriers. The achieved speed-up in the agent’s learning time, compared to the fully classical picture, confirms the potential of quantum technologies for future RL applications. [1] Sriarunothai, T. et al. Quantum Science and Technology 4, 015014 (2018). [2] Saggio, V. et al. Nature 591, 229–233 (2021).

Valeria Saggio is currently a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Vienna (Austria), where she obtained her Ph.D. under the supervision of Prof. Philip Walther. She carried out her Master thesis at the University of Florence (Italy) and did an internship at the Queen's University Belfast (UK) during her studies at the University of Catania (Italy), where she obtained her B.A. and M.S. in Physics. Her research has a strong experimental focus on quantum computing with photonic platforms. During her Ph.D. she worked on demonstrating efficient detection of multipartite entanglement in photonic cluster states, as well as on applications of quantum mechanics to reinforcement learning. Her research interests include working with bulk as well as integrated optics.

Recently, photonic implementation of artificial neural networks (ANNs) has catching interests because they have a great potential to reduce the operational power and latency beyond the electronic computing. The photonic circuit can solve large scale matrix operation, which is a dominant factor of ANN computation, with ultrafast propagation speed thanks to their inherent parallelism in space, frequency and time division. Here, I demonstrate a reservoir computing — a randomly connected recurrent neural network — specified on-chip photonic circuit capable of operating at sub-Peta-scale Multiply-Accumulate per second speeds [1]. I also explain the relationship between deep neural network and wave equation in the waveguide, which enables large-scale integration of photonic neuromorphic circuit in future [2]. [1] M. Nakajima et al., Commun. Phys. 4, 20 (2021). [2] M. Nakajima et al., arXiv:2006.13541

Mitsumasa Nakajima received the M.E. and Ph.D. degrees in material science from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan, in 2010 and 2015, respectively. In 2010, he joined Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) Laboratories, where he was involved in the development of large-scale optical switches. Recent his research interests are optical switches and their applications including neuromorphic photonics and optical signal processing for telecom. He was a recipient of the 8 research award including Young Engineer Award from the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers (IEICE) of Japan

Nonlinear integrated photonics is is on the cusp of realizing devices that will be widely used for applications in data communications, sensing, time-frequency metrology, and quantum information science. I will describe our recent work on developing nonlinear optical processes that can be used for generating squeezed states of light, quantum random number generation, and quantum frequency conversion.

Gaeta received his Ph.D. in 1991 in Optics from the University of Rochester. He joined the faculty in the Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics at Columbia University in 2015, where he is the David M. Rickey Professor. Prior to this, he was a professor in the School of Applied and Engineering Physics at Cornell University for 23 years. He has published more than 250 papers in quantum and nonlinear optics. He co-founded PicoLuz, Inc. and was the founding Editor-in-Chief of Optica. He is a Fellow of the OSA, APS, and IEEE, is a Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher, and was awarded the 2019 Charles H. Townes Medal from the OSA.

Microwave-to-optical quantum converters represent an indispensable component for quantum communication in future quantum networks. To maintain quantum coherence, it is critical for such devices to operate at milli-Kelvin temperatures in the quantum ground state. Integrating photonics with superconductors at milli-Kelvin temperatures is particularly challenging since the optical excitation leads to unavoidable heating and excess microwave noise, thus placing the device systems in a thermal state as opposed to the desired ground state. In this work, we demonstrate efficient bidirectional microwave-to-optical conversion with an electro-optic device fabricated on an integrated AlN photonic platform in a milli-Kelvin environment. Our device operates near its quantum ground state and meanwhile offers 0.12% conversion efficiency – a rate that is suitable for building two-node quantum network through heralding protocols.[1] This fully integrated converter offers advantages including tunability, scalability, and high pump power handling capability. Harnessing a pulsed drive scheme, we suppress the microwave resonator’s thermal occupancy by 30 dB to as low as 0.09±0.06 quanta (92±5% ground state probability). By studying microwave noise thermodynamics, we unravel the underlying light-induced noise generation mechanisms, which provide important guidelines for future deployment of chipscale electro-optical devices as quantum links between superconducting quantum computers. [2,3] References [1] C. Zhong, Z. Wang, C. Zou, M. Zhang, X. Han, W. Fu, M. Xu, S. Shankar, M. H. Devoret, and H. X. Tang, Proposal for Heralded Generation and Detection of Entangled Microwave–Optical-Photon Pairs, Phys. Rev. Lett. 124, 10511 (2020). [2] W. Fu, M. Xu, X. Liu, C. L. Zou, C. Zhong, and X. Han, Ground-State Pulsed Cavity Electro-Optics for Microwave-to-Optical Conversion, ArXiv Preprint ArXiv (2020). [3] M. Xu, X. Han, C.-L. Zou, W. Fu, Y. Xu, C. Zhong, L. Jiang, and H. X. Tang, Radiative Cooling of a Superconducting Resonator, Phys. Rev. Lett. 124, 33602 (2020).

Hong Tang is the Llewellyn West Jones, Jr. Professor of Electrical Engineering, Physics and Applied Physics at Yale University. His research utilizes integrated photonic circuits to study photon-photon, photon-phonon and photon-spin interactions as well as quantum photonics involving microwave and optical photons. He has been on Yale faculty since 2006. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award and Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering.

Defect spin qubits in silicon carbide (SiC) with associated nuclear spin quantum memories can leverage near-telecom emission and wafer-scale semiconductor device engineering for creating quantum technologies. Here, I highlight recent advances with the neutral divacancy defect (VV0) in SiC within the context of long-distance quantum communication and repeater schemes. Broadly, I will illustrate how quantum states can be controlled, tuned, and enhanced through their integration into SiC mechanical, photonic, and electrical devices. I will first describe the isolation of single VV0 defects in functional SiC optoelectronic devices, which allows for deterministic charge state control and terahertz tuning, but also surprisingly eliminates spectral diffusion in the optical structure of these defects. I will then discuss the entanglement and control of nuclear spin registers, and show how isotopic engineering can enhance both nuclear quantum memories and electron spin coherence times, while also demonstrating high fidelity control (99.98%), initialization, and readout. Briefly, I will further highlight recent results that universally protect spin coherence from electrical, magnetic, and thermal noise, resulting in T2*>20 ms in a naturally abundant crystal. This suite of results establishes SiC as a promising platform for scalable quantum science with optically-active spins.

Chris is currently a postdoctoral scholar in the research group of David Awschalom at the University of Chicago at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering. Recently, he completed his PhD in Physics in the same group. Generally, Chris works on developing the physics and devices that will enable the next generation of quantum technologies using spins in semiconductors. He was awarded a NDSEG fellowship for his graduate work. Chris was a researcher in spintronics in Vanessa Sih’s group, and worked on ultrafast chemical physics in Roseanne Sension’s group at the University of Michigan, where he received a B.S in Chemistry and Physics. Chris has also worked on attosecond laser systems at the Max-Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics, and spent his early years as a molecular biology and genomics researcher.

Programmable Integrated Photonics (PIP) is a new paradigm in integrated optics which seeks to provide versatile and flexible circuits, systems and subsystems adaptable to a myriad of applications. In a way PIP follows a similar itinerary as that of integrated electronics 4 decades ago but with substantial differences. In this talk, after a brief introduction to PIP, I will focus on the Field Programmable Photonic Gate Array (FPPGA) device, where a common hardware becomes multifunctional by suitable software programming. I will discuss the different hardware and software tiers involved in its development and will also provide experimental results obtained both within our research group as well as in our spinoff company. Finally, I will develop some application cases (including RF-Photonics) for the device and discuss possible future evolution paths.

José capmany is professor of Photonics at the Universitat politècnica de València, Spain and leader of the Photonics Rsearch Labs (www.prl.upv.es). He holds a MSc+BSc+PhD in Telecommunications Engineering and a MSc+BSc+PhD in Physics. His research stands out in two fields: Microwave Photonics and more recently the programmable integrated photonics. He has published over 640 papers in international JCR journals and conferences in different field of optical communications and photonic processing. He received the Premio Nacional de Investigación (National Research Award) Leonardo Torres Quevedo in Engineering in 2020 and the Premio Rey Jaime I in New Technologies (2012) for his contribution to the fields of Microwave and Programmable Photonics. In 2016 he obtained an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) to develop the field of Programmable Integrated Photonics and in 2019 a Proof of Concept Grant from the same institution. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Optical Society of America (OSA) and the Institution of Engineering Technology (IET). He has co-founded 2 spinoff companies: VLC Photonics (www.vlcphotonics.com), (specific purpose photonic circuit design house recently acquired by Hitachi High Technologies), and iPronics, Programmable Photonics (www.ipronics.com), (programmable optical chips), selected by Nature magazine as one of the 44 companies to watch within the SpinoffPrize 2020 call.

Quantum networks enable a broad range of practical and fundamental applications spanning distributed quantum computing through sensing and metrology. A key element of such networks is an interface between photons and stationary quantum memories--qubits. I will first present the recent results on coupling the Silicon-Vacancy color centers in diamond to photons via nanophotonic cavities. Next, I will introduce a novel approach based on nano-optomechanics which we use to control electron spins of the Nitrogen-Vacancy centers in diamond with telecom photons at room temperature. The latter method does not involve qubit optical transitions and is insensitive to spectral diffusion. This approach can be applied to a broad range of solid-state qubits and paves the way to hybrid quantum networks.

I received the undergraduate degree in Physics and Mathematics from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and then in 2013 earned PhD in Physics from Lebedev Physical Institute for laser cooling and trapping of thulium atoms. In 2014, I moved to Massachusetts to work as a postdoc in Misha Lukin's group at Harvard University. Our sub-team was focused on study of the silicon-vacancy defects in diamond -- a new promising color center for quantum networking. In 2019, I joined Paul Barclay's lab at the University of Calgary as a staff scientist to develop a new spin-photon interface based on cavity optomechanics.

Physical learning machines use physical dynamics to achieve the same kind of general information processing and training that artificial neural networks are known for, but possibly faster and more energy-efficient. Self-learning machines can be defined as an ambitious subset of physical learning machines: They can be trained without requiring any form of external feedback to update the trainable parameters inside the device. In this talk, I will describe a new general idea that can be used to realize self-learning starting from any kind of Hamiltonian system with time-reversible dynamics. I will explain the reasoning and intuitive ideas behind it, as well as the ingredients that will be useful in building such devices in various physical platforms.

Since 2016, Florian Marquardt leads the theory division of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen, Germany. His work covers the intersection of nanophysics and quantum optics. Research topics include cavity optomechanics, topological transport, quantum many-body dynamics, and the interface between machine learning and physics. After defending his thesis in 2002 in Basel, Switzerland, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Yale before becoming a junior research group leader at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich and finally a full professor and subsequently Max Planck director at Erlangen.

At the same time as the development of quantum technologies progresses rapidly, new demands concerning the certification of their operation emerge. A question relevant for the application of various quantum technologies consequently is how the user can ensure the correct functioning of the quantum devices [1]. In a number of instances, specifically in quantum simulation and quantum computing, challenges in appropriately benchmarking components or entire protocols constitute a widely acknowledged bottleneck. This talk will suggest several new takes to the problem at hand: We will see how data from SPAM-robust randomized benchmarking [2] can be used to perform process tomography of quantum gates in an experimentally-friendly and provably sample optimal fashion [3], making use of a machinery of compressed sensing and exploiting structure - that is to say, the components of a quantum circuit. We will see how quantum states can be characterizes provably even with imperfect detectors in what could be called semi-device-dependent tomography [4]. The issue becomes more challenging when one aims at certifying the functioning of an entire device. We will look at limitations to black-box verification for sampling problems that show a quantum advantage or "supremacy" [5], will have a fresh look at Hamiltonian learning [6] and will see that in some instances [7], one can ironically certify the correctness of a device even if one cannot efficiently predict its performance. [1] Quantum certification and benchmarking, J. Eisert, D. Hangleiter, N. Walk, I. Roth, D. Markham, R. Parekh, U. Chabaud, E. Kashefi, Nature Reviews Physics 2, 382-390 (2020). [2] Randomized benchmarking for individual quantum gates, E. Onorati, A. H. Werner, J. Eisert, Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 060501 (2019). [3] Recovering quantum gates from few average gate fidelities, I. Roth, R. Kueng, S. Kimmel, Y.-K. Liu, D. Gross, J. Eisert, M. Kliesch, Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 170502 (2018). [4] Semi-device-dependent blind quantum tomography, I. Roth, J. Wilkens, D. Hangleiter, J. Eisert, arXiv:2006.03069 (2020). [5] Sample complexity of device-independently certified quantum supremacy, D. Hangleiter, M. Kliesch, J. Eisert, C. Gogolin, Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 210502 (2019). [6] In preparation (2020). [7] J. Haferkamp, D. Hangleiter, A. Bouland, B. Fefferman, J. Eisert, and J. Bermejo-Vega, arXiv:1908.08069, Phys. Rev. Lett. (2020).

He is known for his research in and has made numerous contributions to quantum information science and quantum many-body theory in condensed matter physics. He has made significant contributions on entanglement theory and the study of quantum computational models, as well as quantum optical implementations of protocols in the quantum technologies and the study of complex quantum systems. He is also notable as one of the co-pioneers of quantum game theory with Maciej Lewenstein and PhD advisor Martin Wilkens.

The unique physical properties of two-dimensional materials, combined with the ability to stack unlimited combinations of atomic layers with arbitrary crystal angle, has unlocked a new paradigm in designer quantum materials. For example, when two different monolayers are brought into contact to form a heterobilayer, the electronic interaction between the two layers results in a spatially periodic potential-energy landscape: the moiré superlattice. The moiré superlattice can create flat bands and quench the kinetic energy of electrons, giving rise to strongly correlated electron systems. Further, single particle wave packets can be trapped in the moiré potential pockets with three-fold symmetry to form ‘quantum dots’ which can emit single photons. Here I will present magneto-optical spectroscopy of a 2H-MoSe2/WSe2 heterobilayer device with ~3° twist. I will discuss moiré-trapped inter-layer excitons, which can emit quantum light, and intra-layer excitons, which exhibit a large number of strongly correlated electron and hole states as a function of fractional filling.

Professor Brian Gerardot holds a Chair in Emerging Technology from the Royal Academy of Engineering and leads the Quantum Photonics Lab at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland (more information: http://qpl.eps.hw.ac.uk/). His research, at the interface of quantum optics, condensed-matter physics, and materials science, aims to engineer and controllably manipulate quantum states in semiconductor devices, in particular with III-V quantum dots and van der Waals heterostructure devices. Brian obtained a BS from Purdue University and a PhD in Materials Science from UC Santa Barbara.

Superconducting qubits are a leading platform for scalable quantum computing and quantum error correction. One feature of this platform is the ability to perform projective measurements orders of magnitude more quickly than qubit decoherence times. Such measurements are enabled by the use of quantum-limited parametric amplifiers in conjunction with ferrite circulators - magnetic devices which provide isolation from noise and decoherence due to amplifier backaction. Because these non-reciprocal elements have limited performance and are not easily integrated on-chip, it has been a longstanding goal to replace them with a scalable alternative. Here, we demonstrate a solution to this problem by using a superconducting switch to control the coupling between a qubit and amplifier. Doing so, we measure a transmon qubit using a single, chip-scale device to provide both parametric amplification and isolation from the bulk of amplifier backaction. This measurement is also fast, high fidelity, and has 70% efficiency, comparable to the best that has been reported in any superconducting qubit measurement. As such, this work constitutes a high-quality platform for the scalable measurement of superconducting qubits.

Eric I. Rosenthal is a Ph.D. student at the University of Colorado, Boulder, under the advisement of Professor Konrad Lehnert at JILA. He received his B.A. and M.S. in physics from the University of Pennsylvania in 2015 and is expected to receive his Ph.D. in physics in the spring of 2021. His research interest is in the advancement of quantum information technology using superconducting systems. In particular, his research has involved the development of superconducting switches, amplifiers, and non-reciprocal devices to improve the measurement of superconducting qubits.

Topology plays a fundamental role in contemporary physics and enables new information processing schemes and wave device physics with built-in robustness. Recently, significant efforts have been devoted to transposing topological principles to bosonic systems. In the first part of this talk, I will discuss our invention of the first topological laser, a non-reciprocal light source capable of coupling stimulated emission to selected waveguide output in a controllable manner. I will also discuss unique optical devices based on this platform. In the second part of the talk, I will discuss our recently proposed scheme to systematically implement singularities known as exceptional points in passive plasmonics. I will discuss the new scheme and how we overcame current immuno-assay nano sensing record with plasmons by more than two orders of magnitude.

Boubacar Kanté is an associate professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) at the University of California Berkeley. In 2010, he received a Ph.D degree in Engineering/Physics from “Université de Paris Sud” (Orsay-France). He was assistant professor and then associate professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at UC san Diego from 2013 to 2018. His research interests include wave-matter interaction and nano-optics. Boubacar Kanté is a 2020 Moore Inventor Fellow. He received the 2017 Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Award, the 2016 National Science Foundation (NSF) Career Award, The best undergraduate teacher award from UC San Diego Jacob School of Engineering in 2017, the 2015 Hellman Fellowship, the Richelieu Prize in Sciences from the Chancellery of Paris Universities for the best Ph.D in France in Engineering, Material Science, Physics, Chemistry, Technology in 2010, the Young Scientist Award from the International Union of Radio Science (URSI) in Chicago in 2007, the Fellowship for excellence from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2003 for his undergraduate studies, a Research Fellowship from the French Research Ministry for his Ph.D studies.

Recent advances in quantum information science enabled the development of quantum communication network prototypes and created an opportunity to study full-stack quantum network architectures. This talk introduces SeQUeNCe, a comprehensive, customizable quantum network simulator. Our simulator consists of five modules: Hardware models, Entanglement Management protocols, Resource Management, Network Management, and Application. This modularized framework is suitable for simulation of quantum network prototypes that capture the breadth of current and future hardware technologies and protocols. We implement a comprehensive suite of network protocols and demonstrate the use of SeQUeNCe by simulating a quantum key distribution network, a teleportation network, and a metropolitan quantum network in the Chicago area consisting of nine routers equipped with quantum memories. Quantum network simulations are expected to play an increasingly important role in designing future quantum networks that scale to long distances and large number of hosts, and meet the latency, reliability and security needs of emerging applications. SeQUeNCe is freely available on GitHub.

Martin Suchara is a Computational Scientist at Argonne National Laboratory and at the University of Chicago with expertise in quantum computing and quantum communication. His group focuses on theoretical studies of photonic quantum networks, quantum error correction, quantum simulations, and optimizations of the quantum computing software stack. Dr. Suchara is the leader of the Simulation & Systems Thrust of the Q-NEXT National Quantum Information Science Research Center based at Argonne National Laboratory. Prior to joining Argonne he worked as a Principal Scientist at AT&T Labs and received postdoctoral training in quantum computing from UC Berkeley and the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center. Dr. Suchara received his PhD from the Computer Science department at Princeton University.

Lithium niobate on insulator (LNOI) is one of the most promising emerging platforms for photonics integrated circuits (PICs) that comprises a unique set of interesting optical properties such as: a high electro-optic (EO) coefficient, high intrinsic 2nd and 3rd order nonlinearities, and a large transparency window (350 nm - 5500nm). Lithium niobate (LiN) has attracted a lot of attention since the 1970s, however, most of its industrial success has been limited to devices made from bulk LiN crystals in the form of free-space or fiber-coupled components using ion-implanted waveguides. Recent advancements in bonding of single crystal thin films of LiN onto silicon substrates (LNOI), opens a new avenue to explore the advantages of LiN in the context of PICs and to benefit from their miniaturization, cost reduction, scalable manufacturing and integration. In the LNIO platform, waveguides are fabricated using reactive ion etching (RIE) in a LiN thin film which allows for significantly higher refractive index contrast () compared to traditional waveguides made by ion implantation technology in bulk crystals (). This allows to reduce the optical mode volume by more than ~100x. Such high confinement not only results in more efficient and faster modulators but also in significantly smaller bending radii and PIC footprints, which, ultimately enables designing complex PICs with tens of components in a millimeters-size chips. In an LNOI platform we can combine high performance active EO components such as modulators, phase shifters and tunable cavities with unique optical nonlinearities at a wide range of wavelengths to achieve truly novel functionalities and PIC designs that are beyond the capabilities of any PIC platform commercially available today. In this talk I will present the recent progress at CSEM toward developing an EO and nonlinear PIC platform based on LNOI. We start by reviewing the advantages of LNOI platform for various application areas such as telecom, optical signal processing, programmable PICs, LiDAR, spectroscopy, quantum information processing, and nonlinear photonic. Then we will review how LNOI platform fits within the industrial PIC ecosystem and how it compares with other PIC platforms such as Si, SiN and InP. We then discuss the challenges in fabricating high quality photonics circuits in LNOI and will review CSEM’s recent results in design, fabrication, and testing of high quality LNOI photonic circuits. Next, we briefly review few successful example and experiments performed by CSEM or in collaboration with other groups in the areas of nonlinear photonics and quantum information processing. Finally, I will present the future perspectives of our LNOI platform including the process design kit (PDK) library and the means that interested parties can access our platform as a pre-commercial foundry service.

Dr. Amir H. Ghadimi is currently a senior scientist and a group leader at the Swiss Center for Electronics and Micro/nano technology (CSEM). He is currently leading the efforts at CSEM in the areas of PICs and PIC based sensing where together with his team they are developing two PIC platforms based on SiN and LNOI. He obtained his PhD. in electrical engineering in 2018 from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL). His PhD research focused on quantum optomechanics, precision sensing and applications of high Q optical and mechanical resonators. He is the recipient of Swiss national funding (SNF) Bridge discovery grant (2020), Swiss Physical Society (SPS) 2019 young scientist award, Swiss Nanotechnology best PhD award (2018) and European frequency and time forum (EFTF) best paper award (2018).

High sensitivity photon detectors are essential in qubit measurement and remote entanglement, as well as dark matter detection and observing the cosmic infrared background in astrophysics. However, sensing in microwave and far-infrared spectrum is challenging because of the low photon energy. In this talk, we will present how to leverage the giant thermal response of graphene electrons for photon detection. Interestingly, when our graphene bolometer achieves a record-high sensitivity of 10-19 W/Hz1/2, this sensitivity is limited, no longer by extrinsic factors but, by the statistical thermal fluctuation intrinsic to the graphene electrons as a canonical ensemble at 0.2 K [1]. Using the graphene-based Josephson junction, we demonstrate the single-photon detection in the infrared regime by observing the photon shot noise [2]. As an outlook, we will discuss how the unique properties of two-dimensional materials will open new opportunities in quantum information science. [1] Nature 586, 42 (2020) [2] arXiv:2011.02624.

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Dr. Kin Chung Fong came to the United States to pursue his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Chris Hammel at Ohio State University. This is where KC develops his passion on high sensitivity experiments to observe new physical phenomena that cannot be otherwise measured. These include detecting a single electron spin magnetic resonance for nanoscale MRI, measuring superconducting qubits with quantum-limit amplifications, and detecting Dirac fluid in graphene. After his postdoc at Caltech, KC joined BBN Technologies in 2013. His research now focuses on studying the fundamental physics of strongly interacting Dirac and Weyl fermions in condensed matter systems with their connections to holographic principle, and developing the Josephson junction single photon detector for quantum information science, radioastronomy, and the search of dark matter axions. KC loves spending time outdoor with his family during weekends and learning new things from friends and collaborators, especially over a coffee!

Highly excited eigenstates of interacting quantum systems are generically “thermal,” in the sense that physical observables behave as they would in thermal equilibrium--all initial conditions give rise to locally thermal behavior at times past the intrinsic dynamical timescale. Systems in which thermalization is absent are of great fundamental interest because they violate equilibrium statistical mechanics, and of technological interest because some quantum information encoded in these states evades decoherence. For the purpose of tackling this line of inquiry, ultracold neutral atoms in dilute gas offers a suitable tabletop platform that is well isolated from the environment and readily scalable to the thermodynamic limit. In this talk, I will describe our recent efforts of creating nonthermal states in a bosonic quantum gas of dysprosium, the most magnetic element, confined in quasi-1D waveguides. With repulsive long-range dipolar interactions that are two orders of magnitude stronger than alkali atoms, a highly excited super-Tonks-Girardeau gas is stabilized against collapse and thermalization. Stiffness and energy-per-particle measurements indicate that the system is dynamically stable regardless of short-range contact interaction strength. This metastability enables the cycling of contact interactions from weakly to strongly repulsive, then strongly attractive, and finally weakly attractive via two neighboring magnetically tuned collisional resonances. Iterating this quantum holonomy cycle allows an energy-space topological pumping method to create a hierarchy of increasingly excited prethermal states. In addition to being the first experimental realization of a dipolar Luttinger liquid, the result opens up an unexplored regime of quantum control and may have wide-ranging implications for understanding the onset of chaos in near-integrable systems.

Wil Kao is an Applied Physics Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University, where he works on quantum simulation using dipolar quantum gases under the supervision of Prof. Benjamin Lev. He holds a B.A.Sc. in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto.

Silicon nitride photonic integrated circuit (PIC) technology has come forth as one of the main photonic integration platforms. Silicon nitride PIC technology has many great features such as low waveguide loss, a wide transparency range (400 nm – 4000 nm), and the possibility of low-cost mass manufacturing using CMOS infrastructure. Yet, many applications require on-chip lasers, modulators, and detectors, which are not available in standard silicon nitride PIC technology. This talk will show how a technique called micro-transfer-printing can be used to integrate thin-film devices, made out of various materials, with silicon nitride PICs to realize on-chip lasers, modulators, and detectors. Micro-transfer-printing can be done in a massively parallel fashion on a wafer-scale, thereby offering a path to high-volume, low-cost production.

Artur did his BSc degree in Engineering (Electronics and information technology) from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in 2012. Afterwards, he entered the European MSc in Photonics program during which he spent a semester at Ghent University, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the University of St Andrews and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). At EPFL, he did his master's thesis with Professor T. J. Kippenberg. In 2014, he joined the Photonics Research group to work on low-temperature processed thin films of second-order nonlinear optical materials for silicon nitride photonic integrated circuits, under supervision of Professor R. Baets and Professor S. Clemmen. For this work he was awarded a PhD degree in 2019. Currently, he is working as a postdoc in the Photonics Research Group on III-V-on-SiN mode-locked lasers. Artur's work at MIT will focus on visible-spectrum photonics for quantum control, with a particular focus on cold atom control with our CUA collaborators Profs Vuletic, Lukin, and Greiner.

Computational imaging involves the joint design of imaging system hardware and software, optimizing across the entire pipeline from acquisition to reconstruction. Computers can replace bulky and expensive optics by solving computational inverse problems. This talk will describe end-to-end learning for development of new microscopes that use computational imaging to enable 3D fluorescence and phase measurement. Traditional model-based image reconstruction algorithms are based on large-scale nonlinear non-convex optimization; we combine these with unrolled neural networks to learn both the image reconstruction algorithm and the optimized data capture strategy.

Laura Waller is the Ted Van Duzer Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) at UC Berkeley, a Senior Fellow at the Berkeley Institute of Data Science, and affiliated with the UCB/UCSF Bioengineering Graduate Group. She received B.S., M.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2004, 2005 and 2010, and was a Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer of Physics at Princeton University from 2010-2012. She is a Packard Fellow for Science & Engineering, Moore Foundation Data-driven Investigator, Bakar Fellow, OSA Fellow and Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator. She has recieved the Carol D. Soc Distinguished Graduate Mentoring Award, Agilent Early Career Profeessor Award (Finalist), NSF CAREER Award and the SPIE Early Career Achievement Award.

This talk will give an overview of Tyndall’s capabilities in developing advanced photonic and electronic sub-systems and how these are integrated to produce fully functioning prototypes. The talk will also present Tyndall’s capabilities to enable scale-up from prototypes to pilot scale manufacturing and the drive to develop packaging standards. The talk will also discuss new research activities to develop a more scalable packaging technology for mass markets, taking lessons from the electronics industry to build a new global standard in photonic packaging.

Prof. Peter O’Brien is head of the Photonics Packaging & Systems Integration Group at the Tyndall Institute, University College Cork in Ireland. He is also Director of the PIXAPP European Packaging Pilot Line (www.pixapp.eu), Director of the new European Photonics Innovation Academy and Deputy Director of the Science Foundation Ireland Photonics Centre, IPIC. He previously founded and sold a photonics start-up company and was a researcher in millimeter wave devices at Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The coupling between spin, charge, and lattice degrees of freedom plays an important role in a wide range of fundamental phenomena. Monolayer semiconductor is an emerging platform for studying these coupling effects due to unique spin-valley locking physics for hosting rich excitonic species and reduced screening for strong Coulomb interaction. In this talk, I will present the observation of both symmetry-allowed and -forbidden valley phonons, i.e. phonons with momentum vectors pointing to the corners of Brillouin zone, in a monolayer semiconductor WSe2. From the analysis of Landé g-factors and emission polarization of photoluminescence peaks, we identified the efficient intervalley scattering of quasi particles in both exciton formation and light emission process. These understandings enable us to unravel a series of photoluminescence peaks as valley phonon replicas of neutral and charged dark excitons, as well as deeply bound excitonic states with anomalously long population lifetime (> 5 µs). Our work not only shows monolayer WSe2 is a prime candidate for studying interactions between spin, pseudospin, and zone-edge phonons, but also opens opportunities to engineer collective quantum optical phenomena using homogenous intrinsic defect-bound excitons in ultraclean two-dimensional materials.

Xiaodong Xu is a Boeing Distinguished Professor in the Department of Physics and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. He received his PhD (Physics, 2008) from the University of Michigan and then performed postdoctoral research (2009-2010) at the Center for Nanoscale Systems at Cornell University. His nanoscale quantum optoelectronics group at University of Washington focuses on creation, control, and understanding of novel device physics based on two-dimensional quantum materials.

Silicon Photonics is probably the only technology that really enables large-scale integration of photonic building blocks. This is made possible by the high-end manufacturing technology developed for the CMOS industry, combined with the very high refractive index contrast of silicon and silicon dioxide. This allows submicron waveguides that can be packed close together on a chip. However, the high index contrast makes the silicon waveguides also extremely sensitive to fabrication variations. When combining many elements in a circuit, this variability will affect the overall circuit yield, limiting the effective scale of the circuits. Therefore, circuit design for silicon photonics needs to incorporate the effects of fabrication variations early in the design process, optimizing the circuit layout to maximize the yield. We will discuss these effects and the workflows needed to implement variability aware design for silicon photonics.

Wim Bogaerts is a professor in the Photonics Research Group at Ghent University and IMEC. He completed his PhD in 2004, pioneering the use of CMOS tools to make photonic circuits. Between 2000 and 2010, he was instrumental in the buildup of IMEC’s silicon photonics technology. In parallel, he also started developing the design tool IPKISS to implement complex silicon photonic circuits. In 2014, he co-founded Luceda Photonics, bringing his design tools to the market. In 2016 he returned full-time to Ghent University and IMEC on research grant of the European Research Council. His research now focuses on the challenges for large-scale photonic circuits and the new field of programmable photonics. He is a senior member of IEEE, OSA and SPIE.