Institute Colloquium
MEET THE EXPERT ON OPTICAL SENSING
Dr. Auro Perego
Unconventional parametric amplification in dissipative optical resonators and coupled nonlinear waveguides
October 12, 2023
Start: 2:00 p.m.
Conference Room at Leibniz IPHT
Contact person: Maria Chernysheva
Dr. Perego is a Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellow at the Aston Institute of Photonic Technologies, Aston University (Birmingham, UK). His research interests include theory, numerical simulations and experimental work about optical frequency combs generation in optical resonators, neurmorphic computing using optical microresonators and parametric amplification in nonlinear waveguides. Dr. Perego has an extensive experience in the design of novel mode-locked laser and optical resonator sources and in their numerical and analytical characterisation, particularly first demonstration of an harmonically mode-locked fibre laser with detuned spectral filters
(Mamyshev Oscillator) and the concept of the Gain-Through-Filtering technique to induce frequency combs and pulses generation in passive nonlinear optical resonators with spectral filters. Dr. Perego has co-authored more than 40 scientific publications including in journals such as Nat. Commun., Light: S&A, Optica, PRL. He has been an invited speaker at international prestigious international conferences in photonics such as CLEO and ECOC. He has organised symposia on optical frequency combs at CLEO US 2022 and at Photon UK 2022 and has been Program Committee member at CLEO US (2022, 2023) and at Photon UK (2022).
In this Colloquium I will present recent results on non conventional methods for parametric amplification and spectral sidebands generation – leveraging the role of frequency dependent losses, nonlinear interaction between counter-propagating waves and multimode operation – both in waveguides and in optical resonators.
In the first part of the talk I will focus on nonlinear Kerr resonators introducing how intracavity spectral filtering can be used to selectively control phase-matching in normal dispersion resonators. This enables frequency amplification in the otherwise stable cavity, and tuneability of generated sidebands as well as optical frequency combs line spacing. I will furthermore discuss modulation instability and frequency combs generation in Kerr Fabry-Perot resonators highlighting novel degrees of freedom for controlling the nonlinear response of the system.
In the second part of the talk I will present a parametric amplification scheme based on coupled nonlinear waveguides. This configuration enables achieving flat broadband gain spectrum (without the characteristic two lobes of single waveguide parametric amplifiers) also featuring low noise-figure, and resilience to zero-dispersion wavelength fluctuations; which is promising for applications in optical communications.
The lecture will be given in English.
