On the 7th of December the OSA and SPIE student chapters at the Australian National University (ANU) hosted a workshop on the latest advances in nonlinear and quantum photonics, titled “Photonics Vitality.” The workshop was organised by the members of the student chapters with the encouragement of Professors Yuri Kivshar and Dragomir Neshev of the Research School of Physics and Engineering at ANU. By taking advantage of the large number of international visitors to Australia at this time of year we were able to produce a workshop with talks by world leaders in the field of photonics.
The day began with a talk by Prof. Zhigang Chen of San Francisco State University in the USA & Nankai University in China on the topic of tunable optical nonlinearity in biological suspensions. He was followed by ANU’s Prof. Yuri Kivshar who gave an overview of all-dielectric photonics with Mie-resonant nanostructures and metasurfaces. This was then followed by Prof. David Moss of Swinburne University in Australia talking about Microwave and RF applications of micro-combs, and then Dr. Alexander Poddubny from ANU spoke about nonlinear and topological photonics.
After morning tea the second session began with a description by Prof. Roberto Morandotti of INRS in Canada of integrated quantum frequency combs. ANU’s Assoc. Prof. Andrey Sukhorukov then discussed recent research on shaping and imaging quantum light with metasurfaces. Also from ANU, Dr. Rose Ahlefeldt spoke on the use of rare earth materials for microwave to optical conversion and PhD student Mr. Kai Wang explained the synthetic dimensions and frequency state reconstruction of spectral photonic lattices.
After lunch the third session began with Prof. Roland Schiek of OTH Regensburg in Germany who spoke about Akhmediev breathers in optical slab waveguides.
He was followed by Dr. Falk Eilenberger of Friedrich Schiller University Jena in Germany who discussed semiconducting 2D materials as a nano-sandbox for fundamental physics and a new platform for optical coatings, light emission and quantum light sources. Then, Dr. Alexander Solntsev of the University of Technology Sydney gave a talk on Sum-Frequency and Photon-Pair Generation in AlGaAs Nano-Disks. Also from the University of Technology Sydney, Dr. Sejeong Kim spoke on Hexagonal Boron Nitride Photonics. Finally, two PhD students from ANU, Mr. Tobias Vogl and Mr. Kirill Koshelev, gave talks on next-generation single-photon sources in 2D materials for satellite-based quantum communication and then meta optics and bound states in the continuum respectively.
The final session began with ANU’s Prof. Dragomir Neshev giving an overview of the field of biosensing with optical metasurfaces. Then Assoc. Prof.Aloyse Degiron of CNRS and Universite Paris Diderot in France spoke on optoelectronics of colloidal quantum dots hybridized with optical antennas. This was followed by Assoc. Prof. Andrey Miroshnichenko of the University of New South Wales in Australia speaking on lightning up silicon nanoparticles. Dr. Chengjun Zou of Friedrich Schiller University Jena in Germany then gave a talk about tunable optical dielectric metasurfaces which are acilitated by the photoalignment of liquid crystals. Dr. Valerio Flavio Gili of Laboratoire MPQ at Universite Paris Diderot in France spoke about all-dielectric nanophotonics with AlGaAs-on-AlOx structures. The final talk for the workshop was given by Mr. Zelio Fusco PhD student at ANU who spoke about nanostructured dielectric fractals on resonant lasmonic metasurfaces for selective and sensitive optical sensing of volatile compounds.
After the talks the participants enjoyed a dinner of Turkish cuisine over which we discussed the many topics explored during the workshop.
Optica & SPIE Student Chapter @ The Australian National University 