Conference Agenda

QuTech and Kavli Institute of Nanoscience, Delft Technical University, The Netherlands

Starting with the demonstration of lasing more than 50 years ago, the special properties of rare-earth ion doped crystals and glasses have given rise to the development of numerous solid-state lasers and amplifiers, which are crucial for the functioning of today’s world-wide Internet. As a fascinating generalization of their use in optical communication infrastructure, it became clear during the past decade that, when cooled to cryogenic temperatures of a few Kelvin, rare-earth crystals also promise the creation of technology for quantum communication networks.

I will discuss recent advances in my and other groups towards the development of key ingredients of such networks: the reversible storage of quantum states of light in large ensembles of rare-earth ions, as well as the creation of single photons using individual emitters. This work is interesting from a fundamental point of view, and furthermore paves the path towards a quantum repeater, which will ultimately enable quantum communications over arbitrary distances.

In this talk, I will discuss our recent progress in the context of metasurfaces with tailored nonlocal responses. Based on these principles, I will describe opportunities for augmented reality, secure communications, analog optical computing and a new generation of light-emitting metasurfaces.

When nanostructures are buried underneath optically opaque layers, extremely-high-frequency. laser-induced ultrasound may be used to detect them, which has potential applications for wafer alignment. In this talk, results will be shown on femtosecond generation and detection of ultrasound to detect buried gratings. We show results on home-made samples consisting of gratings buried underneath up to 20 layers, and discuss possible methods to improve signal strength.