8:50 to 8:55
Welcome and Introduction
Ivo Rendina Istituto di Scienze Applicate e Sistemi Intelligenti "Eduardo Caianiello" (Italy)

8:55 to 9:40
Nonlinear integrated quantum optics with AlGaAs


Sara Ducci
Université Paris Cité (France)

Photonic quantum technologies are a promising platform for a large variety of applications ranging from secure long-distance communications to the simulation of complex phenomena. Among the material platforms under study, semiconductors offer a wide range of functionalities opening several opportunities for the development of integrated quantum photonic circuits. AlGaAs is particularly attractive to monolithically integrate active and passive components since it combines high second order nonlinearity, electro-optic effect and direct bandgap. In this talk, I will present the work of our team on the generation of quantum states of light in the telecom range with nonlinear AlGaAs chips working at room temperature. The talk will review recent developments on monolithic and hybrid integrated devices, describe the versatility of these systems for the generation and manipulation of quantum frequency states and show their potential for the implementation of flexible entanglement-distribution networks for secure communications.

Sara Ducci is full professor at Université Paris Cité and honorary member of the Institut Universitaire de France. She is president of the scientific council of the physics department and co-director of the Graduate School Quantum Technology of Université Paris Cité. She leads a team working on integrated quantum photonics focusing on the development of sources of quantum states of light operating at room temperature and telecom wavelengths; the work ranges from device development to engineering of the generated quantum state and their applications in quantum information protocols.


9:45 to 10:30
Photonic crystal fibres: three decades of novel science



Philip St. J. Russell
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light (Germany)

Since they first appeared in the 1990s, photonic crystal fibres (PCFs)—thin strands of glass with an intricate array of hollow channels running along their length—have ushered in a new era of linear and nonlinear fibre optics. As well as permitting unprecedented control over dispersion and birefringence, they offer guidance in both solid glass and hollow cores. Many applications have emerged, for example: through pressure-adjustable dispersion, gas-filled hollow-core PCF provides an elegant means of compressing pulses to single-cycle durations, as well as underpinning a range of unique sources of tunable deep and vacuum ultraviolet light; chiral PCF is circularly and topologically birefringent, supporting optical vortices and in some cases strong circular dichroism; microparticles optically trapped inside hollow core PCF can be used to sense physical quantities with high spatial resolution; and strong optomechanical effects in solid-core PCF permit stable timing-modulated high harmonic mode-locking at few-GHz repetition rates.

Philip Russell is an emeritus founding director at the Max-Planck Institute for the Science of Light (MPL)in Erlangen, Germany, and director of the RCALS Centre for Advanced Lightwave Science in Hangzhou, China. He obtained his D.Phil. degree in 1979 at the University of Oxford. His interests currently focus on scientific and technical applications of photonic crystal fibres. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and Optica (formerly The Optical Society, OSA) and has won a number of awards including the 2000 OSA Joseph Fraunhofer Award/Robert M. Burley Prize, the 2005 Thomas Young Prize of IOP, the 2005 Körber Prize for European Science, the 2013 EPS Prize for Research into the Science of Light, the 2014 Berthold Leibinger Zukunftspreis, the 2015 IEEE Photonics Award and the 2018 Rank Prize for Optoelectronics.