Assistant professor of Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics Alireza Marandi heads the Nonlinear Photonics Laboratory. His lab is developing the new field of ultrafast nonlinear nanophtonics through realizing and studying nanophotonic devices and circuits that utilize strong and ultrafast nonlinearities towards the next generation sensing and computing technologies. The research combines the frontiers of ultrafast optics, quantum optics, optical information processing, and nanophotonics in material platforms with strong quadratic nonlinearity. So far, these efforts have resulted in record-level on-chip parametric amplification, largest levels of vacuum squeezing in nanophtonics, and record-level all-optical switching, in small monolithic nanophotonic circuits. The group is currently laying the foundation towards large-scale circuits for all-optical quantum information processing, energy-efficient photonic computing with THz clock rates, and universal molecular sensors.
The research of assistant professor of Chemistry Scott Cushing focuses on the creation of new scientific instrumentation that can translate quantum phenomena to practical devices and applications. The Cushing lab is currently pioneering the use of attosecond x-ray, time-resolved TEM-EELS, and ultrafast beams of entangled photons for a range of microscopy and spectroscopy applications. Scott is using the KNI Lab to create high-efficiency entangled photon sources that cover new wavelength regions (deep UV to THz) with broadband widths (up to an octave) and short temporal correlation times (<10 fs). The Cushing lab is ultimately working towards the goal of building a completely on-chip spectrometer that uses entangled correlations to replicate ultrafast, multiphoton, and nonlinear measurements. This source technology and spectroscopy have broader impacts in the Quantum 2.0 world such as for multiplexed quantum information systems.
a) Schematic of the entangled photonsource and a cell phone picture of the visible-by-eye entangled photon output. Pictures of the nanofabricated components: b) the metal electrodes used for poling the waveguide, c) the waveguide itself, and d) the abiabatic tapered fibers for in and output coupling to the waveguide.