Course Title:Principles and Applications of Guided Wave Nonlinear Optics

Course Level: Advanced Beginner 

Course Description:

This course will review recent research and applications in the field of nonlinear guided wave optics with emphasis on both fundamentals and emerging applications. Starting from a strong foundation in the principles of nonlinear optics, we will review recent progress in emerging nonlinear optical platforms with an emphasis on the different materials, including silica, silicon, chalcogenide, III-V semiconductors, lithium niobate, photonic crystal fibers, nanophotonic circuits and others. We will establish key figures of merit for these different material systems and a general framework for nonlinear guided wave optics with emphasis on the applications in emerging areas of science and technology. We will then review recent progress and breakthroughs in the following areas: all-optical processing, ultra-fast optical communications, slow light, highly nonlinear and emerging waveguides, ultrafast measurement and pulse characterization, frequency combs and optical clock, optical parametric amplifiers and oscillators, generation and applications of optical supercontinuum, nonlinear localization effects and solitons, nonlinear optics for quantum information. 

Benefits and Learning Objectives: 

This course should enable the participants to: 

• Get state of the art knowledge of nonlinear optics in emerging waveguides and materials 

• Understand the applications of nonlinear optics in key applications 

• Have a foundation of nonlinear waveguide physics for emerging applications and science 

Intended Audience:

This course assumes some basic knowledge/familiarity of nonlinear optics. Individuals lacking such knowledge should consider taking SC149: Foundations of Nonlinear Optics first. 

Instructor Biography: 

Professor Benjamin Eggleton is a global leader in photonics, renowned for his pioneering contributions to nonlinear optics and all-optical signal processing. His groundbreaking research has led to major advances in the nonlinear optics of periodic media, slow-light in photonic crystals, ultrafast planar waveguide nonlinear optics, and Brillouin integrated photonics. Eggleton’s work on novel classes of nonlinear waveguides has redefined ultrafast optical signal processing on photonic chips, with his group holding multiple world records in the field. His breakthroughs in the nonlinear optics of chalcogenide glasses have enabled the development of ultrafast optical devices for telecommunications, record low-threshold supercontinuum sources, and compact on-chip parametric sources. Among his fundamental achievements are the first demonstrations of Bragg and gap soliton formation in periodic media and slow-light-enhanced nonlinear optics in photonic crystals. 

He has authored or co-authored more than 520 journal publications and delivered over 200 invited presentations, with his work accumulating more than 30,000 citations and an h-index of 89 (Web of Science). Eggleton was an Australian Research Council (ARC) Laureate Fellow and served as Director of the ARC Centre for Ultrahigh-Bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS). He is currently Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research) and Professor of Physics at the University of Sydney. He obtained his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Sydney in 1996 before joining Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, as a Postdoctoral Member of Staff. In 2000, he was promoted to Research Director in the Specialty Fiber Business Division of Bell Laboratories, where he led forward-looking research supporting Lucent’s optical fiber device innovations.