Takeaways from Visionary Speakers

Nanophotonic Systems: Active Fabrics of Light

Making a comparison with modern day electronics where individual functions, or “threads,” are so small that we see an overall “fabric” rather than individual devices, Evelyn Hu (above), Harvard University, described profound advances in photonic materials and components that allow us to produce photonic networks and systems that can be regarded as seamless “fabrics” of light.

She reviewed developments in nanoscale engineering of materials that have given rise to an abundance of optical metamaterials and metasurfaces with extraordinary properties such as “near-zero index” materials and “flat” lenses and photonic controllers. The promise of these fabrics of light lies in “smart textiles” that could be integrated widely to sense, analyze, compute, and communicate information about the environment, as well as harvest the energy that would power those functions.

Quantum Technology — The Business Side

One of the meeting’s three “Visionary Speakers” keynote talks on Wednesday included plenty of interesting science, but also focused on the business and political issues emerging as quantum technology drives toward real applications.

The speaker was OSA Fellow Wilhelm Kaenders (above), the cofounder of TOPTICA Photonics AG, Germany, and he stressed that he intended to provide a “small-company perspective” on what’s happening worldwide in the quantum business arena. Today’s quantum scene is “remarkable from a scientific perspective,” he said, “but is also starting to evolve into some opportunities not only in business, but also in a lot of issues that are linked to more strategic and national interests.”

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Increasing Precision in Measurements by a Factor of 100

James Thompson from JILA, at the University of Colorado at Boulder, gave a visionary talk on the future of using the quantum nature of ensembles of atoms to move to the next stage of precision metrology. He gave a short re-cap of how cold atoms and their quantum states have been used to give us our current precision clocks and talked about the limitations of using single atoms and standard laser cavities for reaching further levels of precision.

He then described how using a laser-cooled ensemble of rubidium atoms prepared in an entangled state could allow their phase noise to be reduced by over 50 times, well below the normal quantum limit for single atoms. In addition, he described how using an ensemble of strontium atoms drastically reduces the noise in a precision laser cavity and can lead to extremely narrow linewidths. Early results in his laboratory point to the potential of using this technique to increase the precision of current time and frequency measurements by a factor of 100.

Bonus Content

Go behind-the-scenes with extended video content from Visionary Speakers Jungsang Kim and Majed Chergui and Plenary Speaker Jason Eichenholz.

Today's Visionary Speakers

08:00 – 08:45

A new addition to the Technical Conference: Visionary Speakers come from within and beyond the optics and photonics community — each equipped to provide insight into advances related to the conference themes.

Other Programs

Technical Sessions
09:00 – 12:30, Science Showcase Theater, Columbia

13 Technical Sessions with more than 50 invited and contributed talks are on the schedule for today, ranging in session topics from optical coherence tomography in biomedical optics to instrumentation for optical devices and systems.

Coffee Break
10:00 – 10:30, International Terrace, Terrace Level

It's the last coffee break for the conference. Take advantage of the break by meeting other attendees and presenters. Savor the final sips, knowing that, come Monday, it's back to dropping $2.50 a cup at Starbucks.

Postdeadline Paper Session
13:30 – 15:30, Georgetown East and Jefferson West

Two concurrent sessions of postdeadline papers close out the conference. See late-breaking research across multiple topics.

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