Seminar Announcement: Thi Ngoc Lam Tran

Data pubblicazione: 09-dic-2024

Announcement
Friday, 20 December 2024, 15:00
Sala Grande Palazzina B via alla Cascata 56/C

"Rare-Earth Photonic Glasses on Silicon Nitride: Advancing Towards On-Chip Lasers"

Thi Ngoc Lam Tran
Postdoc researcher at Photonics Research Group,
UGent – Imec,
Belgium
https://www.photonics.intec.ugent.be/

Abstract
Lasers are indispensable in modern science and technology, driving advancements in fields such as sensing, LIDAR, optical clocks, optical coherence tomography (OCT), and spectroscopy. High-performance lasers, characterized by their superior power, coherence, and broad spectral coverage, are traditionally built using hand-assembled active solid-state crystals or rare-earth (RE)-doped fibers, combined with bulky passive components. However, these systems are costly and lack scalability.
Silicon photonics (SiPh)-based lasers offer a more compact, scalable, and cost-efficient alternative with reduced power consumption. Despite these advantages, the performance of SiPh lasers still falls short of their bulk counterparts, presenting significant challenges for adoption in high-demand applications. Recent breakthroughs over the past two years have demonstrated the potential to transform high-performance yet bulky solidstate lasers (SSLs) into on-chip systems such as Ti:sapphire, erbium, and thulium lasers. However, SSL integration on-chip remains in its early stages, facing challenges in design, fabrication, and achieving wavelength versatility.
To address these challenges, rare-earth ions have emerged as a promising solution for developing efficient, broad-wavelength laser gain materials. In this talk, I will summarize the current state-of-the-art in on-chip SSL platforms and discuss our ongoing efforts to develop new rare-earth-based lasers and amplifiers on-chip, particularly for important but underexplored wavelength ranges.