Scaling Classical and Quantum Semiconductor Light Sources

Classical and quantum light sources play a fundamental role in science and technology from laser fusion, to communication, manufacturing, defense, sensing, medicine, or quantum computing. Fundamental challenges have prevented the “scaling” of light sources. For example, efficiently scaling the power of lasers has always come at the cost of single mode operation, a scaling question that has been investigated, without success, since the invention of lasers in 1958. In the first part of the talk, I will discuss a solution to this question with a “scale-invariant” laser that remains single mode irrespective of its cavity size. I will show that the strategy discovered goes beyond the Schawlow-Townes two-mirror strategy that is used by all existing lasers. I will conclude that our strategy overcomes a more than six-decade challenge in wave-physics and that mirrors are bad for the scaling of lasers [1-2]. I may briefly discuss topological light sources that we pioneered [3-5]. In the second part of the talk, I will discuss our recent and surprising introduction of silicon as a programmable material platform for quantum optics with potential applications in future quantum networks/computers [6-7].

Speaker: Boubacar Kante, UC Berkeley

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