Optics Tuesday Lunch Seminars

Presents work from Logan Wright's lab on integrated photonic devices whose functionality is programmed in situ rather than frozen at fabrication — including a lithium niobate waveguide realizing an optical neural network and a silicon nitride waveguide with programmable χ⁽²⁾ nonlinearity for engineered second-harmonic generation.

Applied-math tools for photonic design — optimal design, fundamental limits, fast solvers — applied to compact multi-function devices developed with Meta (AR lenses) and ASML (wafer alignment metrology).

Optically levitated micro/nanoparticle sensors in vacuum, applied to dark matter searches, neutrino property measurements, and tests of gravity between micron-scale particles.

Strategies for mitigating disorder in passive and active photonic systems, and how disorder can instead be turned into a resource — suppressing unwanted nonlinear effects and advancing optical imaging.

Whether photonics is entering a genuinely transformative decade for computing — how that revolution could unfold, where it's likely to fail, and how the field (and the Wright lab specifically) can improve the odds of success.

Spatiospectral wavefront shaping for optimal pulse delivery through disordered media (tissue, multimode fiber, metamaterials), including time-reversal of pulse diffusion in 2D disordered waveguides and multi-target pulse steering.

Levitated drops of superfluid helium as a platform for cavity optomechanics, including recent measurements of the drops' optical, mechanical, and thermal properties.

A theory of multifunctional photonic devices (developed with the Stone and Miller groups), applied to compact multifunctional microwave cavities and free-space-to-photonic-chip mode converters with an order-of-magnitude improvement over prior designs.