Silicon Photonics

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

12:00pm | Schiciano Auditorium - Side A

Presenter

Michal Lipson , Associate Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Silicon is evolving as a versatile photonic platform with multiple functionalities that can be seamlessly integrated. The tool box is rich starting from the ability to guide and amplify multiple wavelength sources at GHz bandwidths, to optomechanical MEMS. The strong confinement of light in ultra small structures also enables the generation of strong optical forces. We have recently shown that nonlinear optical forces can enable controllable manipulation and synchronization of photonic and micromechanical structures. These advances should enable future micro-optomechanical systems (MOMS) with novel and distinct functionalities.
Another research area that recently has emerged is nonlinear optics using silicon photonics. matching of parametric nonlinear optical processes such as four-wave-mixing (FWM) We demonstrated FWM-based frequency conversion in waveguides using as little as 1 mW of pump power in a ring-resonator geometry, and ~100 mW of pump power over bandwidths exceeding 800 nm in a straight-waveguide device.

Michal Lipson is an Associate Professor at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University, Ithaca NY.  Prior to this appointment, she was a postdoctoral associate at the Department of Material Science and Engineering at MIT, following her Ph.D. in Physics at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. Her research focuses on novel on-chip Nanophotonics devices. She holds several patents on novel micron-size photonic structures for light manipulation, and is the author of over 150 technical papers in journals in Physics and Optics.  Professor Lipson’s honors and awards include the MacArthur Fellow, OSA Fellow, IEEE Senior Member, IBM Faculty Award, and NSF Early Career Award.  More information on Professor Lipson can be found at nanophotonics.ece.cornell.edu.