Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CORAL (COntrolling network RAndom Lasers on chip)
Reporting period: 2020-03-01 to 2022-02-28
The photonics industry is booming throughout the world, lasers in particular have played a central role in several technological developments for many decades, from communications to medicine, with an expected market value of €15 billion by 2022 , and is also increasingly important for the European economy. As photonic devices shrink in both physical size and power consumption, integrated photonic devices will increasingly penetrate into consumer products such as smartphones and photonic sensors, for various applications from motion detection to navigation of autonomous vehicles.
The European Industrial doctorate programme CORAL will train two young researchers in photonics technology and in particular in laser science, addressing the increasing need for an educated workforce in photonics in Europe.
CORAL establishes a training programme between two world-class institutions, IBM and Imperial College London (ICL), providing an appropriate balance of applied industrial research as well as in-depth understanding of the underlying physics. The bilateral nature of CORAL enables a close interaction of both partners, with exchange of know-how and shared facilities, aimed at exploiting fully the synergies among the two institutions.
CORAL aims to go beyond conventional integrated photonics to explore the novel field of Random Lasing and in particular Network Lasing . This is a relatively new discipline based on lasing from disordered systems, as for example the collective coupling of multiple nanolasers via nanoscale waveguides and the non-linear control of such coupled systems. This has potential applications in areas such as neuromorphic and quantum computing as well as hardware security, which are all areas of strategic interest. For the ESRs, training in these highly sought disciplines will further complement the solid foundation in integrated photonics that will be gained in CORAL.
The European Industrial doctorate programme CORAL will train two young researchers in photonics technology and in particular in laser science, addressing the increasing need for an educated workforce in photonics in Europe.
CORAL establishes a training programme between two world-class institutions, IBM and Imperial College London (ICL), providing an appropriate balance of applied industrial research as well as in-depth understanding of the underlying physics. The bilateral nature of CORAL enables a close interaction of both partners, with exchange of know-how and shared facilities, aimed at exploiting fully the synergies among the two institutions.
CORAL aims to go beyond conventional integrated photonics to explore the novel field of Random Lasing and in particular Network Lasing . This is a relatively new discipline based on lasing from disordered systems, as for example the collective coupling of multiple nanolasers via nanoscale waveguides and the non-linear control of such coupled systems. This has potential applications in areas such as neuromorphic and quantum computing as well as hardware security, which are all areas of strategic interest. For the ESRs, training in these highly sought disciplines will further complement the solid foundation in integrated photonics that will be gained in CORAL.
We had originally planned to start CORAL in early 2020 and had started with a first round of interviews of ESRs, however the arrival of the Pandemic and the subsequent lock-down of the laboratories at both ICL and IBM, made it impossible to bring new people on-board, and a temporary hiring ban was put in place.
We continued progress towards the project goals based on internal staff already in place, at IBM we had partial access to labs and resources throughout most of the first year except for a few initial complete lock-down months in the spring of 2020. We were therefore able to fabricate different devices based on designs from ICL, some of these have been characterized by researchers at ICL and formed the basis for deliverable 1.1 2.1 2.2. Whereas others will be characterized in the coming months by ESR 2 Anna Fischer.
An amendment was made to the project allowing for an extension of 6 months so that we could bring on board the two ESRs after they finalized their master’s thesis project. The two ESRs are now in place since August and have both been enrolled in the doctoral program at ICL. Therefore, we some delay we are now finally able to kick off efficiently the scientific work in CORAL.
We continued progress towards the project goals based on internal staff already in place, at IBM we had partial access to labs and resources throughout most of the first year except for a few initial complete lock-down months in the spring of 2020. We were therefore able to fabricate different devices based on designs from ICL, some of these have been characterized by researchers at ICL and formed the basis for deliverable 1.1 2.1 2.2. Whereas others will be characterized in the coming months by ESR 2 Anna Fischer.
An amendment was made to the project allowing for an extension of 6 months so that we could bring on board the two ESRs after they finalized their master’s thesis project. The two ESRs are now in place since August and have both been enrolled in the doctoral program at ICL. Therefore, we some delay we are now finally able to kick off efficiently the scientific work in CORAL.
We are at the beginning of the project and the ESRs are working only since August 2021 they have mainly been involved in trainings to obtain the require ed skill and knowledge to perform and execute the required experiments and simulations. Until now most of their time, the ESRs spend of reading papers, attending online lectures and tutorials. This is necessary to become familiar with the science and engineering problems.
So far we have designed and fabricated the first semiconductor network lasers, as well as grown coupled wurtzite nano lasers.
So far we have designed and fabricated the first semiconductor network lasers, as well as grown coupled wurtzite nano lasers.