Nonlinear Nanophotonics

Optical nonlinearities can be used to induce "effective' photon-photon interactions, and form the basis for many applications in optics from all optical information processing to parametric oscillators. Due to extremely small values of nonlinear coefficients (n2~10-19 m2/W) of materials, these nonlinear optical devices generally require very large input powers. By taking advantage of size reduction and large quality factors afforded by nanophotonics, these applications can be realized at relatively low input powers with chip-scale devices. Diamond as a material platform is particularly interesting for nonlinear optics as it is host to many color centers most of which are stable single photon sources [1] and has many desirable material properties such as high thermal conductivity. In this talk, I will summarize some of our work in nanophotonics and recent efforts towards realization of nonlinear nanophotonic devices with ultra-high Q diamond optical resonators [2]. Furthermore, I will discuss possible applications including sensing, frequency combs, optical communications and long distance quantum key distribution.

References:
1) Jennifer T. Choy, Birgit J. M. Hausmann, Thomas M. Babinec, Irfan Bulu, Mughees Khan, Patrick Maletinsky, Amir Yacoby and Marko Lonar, 'enhanced single-photon emission from a diamond"“silver aperture', Nature Photonics 5, 738"“743 (2011).
2) B. J. M. Hausmann, I. Bulu, V. Venkataraman, P. Deotare and M. Lonar, 'diamond nonlinear photonics', Nature Photonics 8, 369"“374 (2014).