Bart Kuyken - ELECTRIC

Bart KuykenBart Kuyken received the BSc in Physics and BSc and MSc in Electrical Engineering from Ghent University in 2006 and 2008 respectively. In 2009, he obtained an additional MSc degree from Stanford University.

After obtaining a PhD degree from Ghent University in 2013, Bart Kuyken focused his post-doctoral work on integrated nonlinear circuits and comb generation and was a visiting worker at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in 2013 and 2014.

In 2015, Bart was appointed tenure track professor at Ghent University. He leads a group of researcher at the Photonics Research Group focusing on the integration of nonlinear optical functions on silicon chips. 

 

Contact:

Publications: https://biblio.ugent.be/person/802000638216

Chip Scale Electrically Powered Optical Frequency Combs (ELECTRIC)


Optical frequency combs are light sources with a spectrum consisting of millions of laser lines, equally spaced in frequency. This equifrequency spacing provides a link between the radio frequency band and the optical frequency band of the electromagnetic spectrum. This property has literally revolutionized the field of frequency metrology and precision laser spectroscopy. Recently, their application field has been extended.

Amongst others, their unique properties have been exploited in precision distant measurement experiments  as well as optical waveform and microwave synthesis demonstrators. Moreover, so called “dual-comb spectroscopy” experiments have demonstrated broadband Fourier Transform Infrared  spectroscopy with ultra-high resolution and record acquisition speeds. However, most of these demonstrations required large bulky experimental setups which hampers wide deployment.

The project aims to build frequency combs on optical chips that can be mass-manufactured. Unlike the current chip scale Kerr comb based solutions they do not need to be optically pumped with a powerful continuous wave laser and can have a narrower comb spacing.

The challenge here is two-fold. First, we need to make electrically powered integrated low noise oscillators. Second, we need to lower the threshold of current on-chip nonlinear optical interactions by an order of magnitude to use them in on-chip OFC generators.ELECTRIC graph