Solitons and Light-Matter Dynamics in Integrated Photonic Chips

Semiconductor optical waveguides have been the subject of intense study for over two decades due to the promise of unprecedented control of light in a monolithic photonic chip. In this talk I will focus on the nonlinear evolution of intense light pulses in these systems.

Specifically, I will describe experimental efforts revealing unique physical phenomena arising from the dynamic interaction of light and free carriers. Critically, the ability to independently tune the dispersion and the nonlinearity in a photonic crystal waveguide enables the examination of completely different nonlinear regimes simply by changing the input wavelength. We support these measurements with analytic modeling to provide deeper insight into the physical scaling of these processes.

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Bio:

Chad received his Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Columbia University (New York, USA) in 2010. While a Fulbright Scholar in 2007-2008, he was a guest researcher at Thales Research & Technology in Paris, France. In 2011 he moved to the University of Sydney, where he was a DECRA fellow (Discovery Early Career Research Award) of the Australian Research Council. He is currently the Alexei Abrikosov Fellow in the Center for Nanoscale Materials (CNM) at Argonne National Laboratory (Chicago). In 2016, Chad represented the Optical Society (OSA) as an Ambassador and in 2017 was elected an OSA Senior Member. His research focuses on the physics of nanoscale light-matter interaction, and hybrid nanophotonic 2D materials and devices.