April 8, 4–5pm, Haus Room, 4th Floor Building 36.
Prof. Marko Lončar
Tiantsai Lin Professor of Electrical Engineering
John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Harvard University
High Performance Integrated Photonics
The last two decades have seen tremendous progress in the field of integrated photonics, and chip-scale photonic systems can now be found everywhere: from optical communications and sensing, to machine vision and precision measurements. However, traditional integrated photonic platforms, based on e.g. silicon and compound semiconductors, are reaching their limits and cannot keep up with the demands for more speed, less energy consumption, and advanced functionality. Low-loss thin film lithium niobate photonic platform pioneered by my team can overcome these limitations. For example, our electro-optic modulators can power up high-speed optical communications and computation, enable mm-wave and THz communications. Our frequency combs are important for environmental and biomedical monitoring, precision measurements and ranging. Finally, microwave-to-optical transducers, based on electro-optic photonic molecule / frequency shifter concept, can enable efficient and low noise interfaces between superconducting quantum computers, while TFLN photonic platform operating in visible is important for realization of multiplexed quantum repeaters and quantum internet.
Biography: Marko Lončar is Tiantsai Lin Professor of Electrical Engineering at Harvard’s John A Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). Lončar received his Diploma from University of Belgrade (R. Serbia) in 1997, and PhD from Caltech in 2003 (with Axel Scherer), both in Electrical Engineering. After completing his postdoctoral studies at Harvard (with Federico Capasso), he joined Harvard faculty in 2006. Lončar is expert in nanophotonics and nanofabrication, and his group has done pioneering work in the field of quantum and nonlinear nanophotonics. In particular, Lončar is recognized for his work on the development of diamond and thin film lithium niobate nanophotonic platforms. Lončar has co-authored more than 250 manuscripts in top scientific journals and has given more than 300 invited talks and seminars. He has received NSF CAREER Award in 2009, Sloan Fellowship in 2010, Marko Jarić Foundation Award in 2020, and Microoptics Conference Award in 2023. In recognition of his teaching activities, Lončar has been awarded Harvard University Levenson Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (2012), and has been named Harvard College Professor in 2017. Lončar is Fellow of Optical Society of America and IEEE, as well as Senior Member of SPIE. He is co-founder of HyperLight Corporation (Cambridge, MA), VC backed startup commercializing lithium-niobate technology developed in his lab.