DLS Shanhui Fan: Synthetic frequency dimensions: from topological physics to optical computation
Biography:
Shanhui Fan is the Joseph and Hon Mai Goodman Professor in the School of Engineering, a Professor of Electrical Engineering, a Professor of Applied Physics (by courtesy), and a Senior Fellow of the Precourt Institute for Energy, at the Stanford University. He received his PhD in 1997 in theoretical condensed matter physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His research interests are in fundamental studies of solid state and photonic structures and devices, especially photonic crystals, plasmonics, and meta-materials, and applications of these structures in energy and information technology applications. He has published approximately 700 refereed journal articles, has given over 400 plenary/keynote/invited talks, and holds over 70 US patents. His work has been cited over 100,000 times according to Google Scholar. He co-founded two companies aiming to commercialize high-speed engineering computations and radiative cooling technology respectively.
Prof. Fan received a National Science Foundation Career Award (2002), a David and Lucile Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering (2003), the U. S. National Academy of Sciences W. O. Baker Award for Initiatives in Research (2007), the Adolph Lomb Medal from the Optical Society of America (2007), a Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship from the U. S. Department of Defense (2017), a Simons Investigator in Physics (2021), and the R. W. Wood Prize from Optica (2022). He is a Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher in Physics since 2015, and a Fellow of the IEEE, the American Physical Society, the Optical Society of America, and the SPIE.
Abstract:
The concept of synthetic dimensions points to new avenues for manipulating the properties of light. Here we review our work in forming synthetic frequency dimensions in dynamically modulated ring resonator structures. A ring resonator supports a set of equally spaced frequency modes. By modulating the ring at frequencies close to the spacing of the resonant modes, these modes at different frequencies can couple together to form a synthetic space along the frequency axis. Importantly, the coupling Hamiltonian of the system is entirely controlled by the modulation format and therefore can readily programmed electronically. In this talk, we discuss our use of such concept of synthetic frequency dimensions to explore novel concepts in Hermitian and non-Hermitian topological physics, and to reduce the resource requirement and enable scaling up in optical computations.
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