1. "Physics, Economics, and Innovation:
Building the Next Generation Optical Network"
Tingye Li, retired from AT&T Labs-Research, USAMini-biography: Tingye Li retired from AT&T in December 1998 after a 41-year research career at Bell Labs and AT&T labs in microwaves, lasers, and optical communications. His early work on laser resonator modes is fundamental to the theory and practice of lasers. Since the late 1960s, he has been engaged in pioneering research in lightwave technologies. As Head of the Lightwave Systems Research Department he led the work on amplified WDM transmission and advocated its deployment for upgrading network capacity. He was deeply involved in the "concurrent R&D" effort in AT&T on WDM systems from 1988 until his retirement. He is a fellow of OSA, IEEE, AAAS, IEC, and PSC, and is a member of NAE, the Chinese Academy of Engineering and the Academia Sinica. He has received many awards and honors, among which are the IEEE 1975 W. R. G. Baker Prize, the IEEE 1979 David Sarnoff Award, the OSA/IEEE 1995 John Tyndall award, the OSA 1997 Frederic Ives Medal/Jarus Quinn Endowment, and the AT&T 1997 Science and Technology Medal. He was named an honorary professor in many universities in China and was President of OSA in 1995. Description: Technological innovations are the underpinnings of engineering advances. As a major technological innovation, lightwave communications has led to revolutionary changes in telecommunications, ranging from the network infrastructure and operation, to the management and economics of supplying bandwidth. Recent advances in optical fiber amplifiers made WDM transmission economically viable, by creating "virtual fibers" for massive capacity upgrades that can meet the large traffic demand of the Internet. Furthermore, optical networking can offer potential cost savings in network management and operation, as well as in service provisioning. Innovating for the next-generation optical network will require not only fundamental knowledge of the physical principles of components and systems, but also understanding of the economic tradeoffs of alternative systems and architectures. This talk will examine some of the technological advances that promise economic advantages for the next-generation optical networks, not only regarding capital costs, but also operational expenditures. |
2. "Quantum Dots for Lasers,
Amplifiers and Computing"
Dieter H. Bimberg, Technical University of Berlin, GermanyMini-biography: Dieter Bimberg was born in Schrozberg, Germany, on July 10, 1942. He received the Diploma in physics and the Ph.D. degree from Goethe University, Frankfurt, in 1968 and 1971, respectively. From 1972 to 1979 he held a Principal Scientist position at the Max Planck-Institute for Solid State Research in Grenoble /France and Stuttgart. In 1979 he was appointed as Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering, Technical University of Aachen. Since 1981 he holds the Chair of Applied Solid State Physics at Technical University of Berlin. Since he 1990 Excecutive Director of the Solid State Physics Institute at the Technical University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany with a faculty of and a staff of 150. Since 1994 he is chairman of the National Research Council "Center of Excellence" on "Growth Related Properties of Nanostructures" and since 1998 of the national "Center of Competence" on "Nano-Optoelectronics" of the German Federal Ministry of Research. Amongst others he hold guest professorships at the University of California in Santa Barbara and at Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto/Ca. His honors include the japanese Oyo Buturi prize of Applied Physics, a honorary membership at the A.F.Ioffe Institute at St.Petersburg and the Russian State Prize in Science and Technology 2001. He has authored more than 800 papers, patents, and books. His research interests include the physics of nanostructures and nanostructured devices, like quantum dot lasers, and amplifiers, wide gap semiconductor heterostructures and high speed photonic devices. Description: Universal self organisation on surfaces of semiconductors was discovered by us to lead to the formation of quantum dots. Their electronic and optical properties are closer to those of atoms than of solids. QD-based edge and surface emitting lasers are superior to classical lasers eg by showing ultralow tranparency currents or zero beam filamentation. First such QD lasers were created by us in 1993. Amplifiers based on QDs show gain recovery times as short as 70 fs, much faster than QW-based ones, indicating the potential of QDs for a completely novel class of SOAs with large commercial importance for MANs. The phase relaxation time of such QDs was discovered by us to be close to 1 ns, making such structures usefull for quantum computing and cryptography. |
3. "The Photonic Crystal Fiber Revolution"
Philip Russell, University of Bath, UKMini-biography: Philip Russell is Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Bath, where he heads the Optoelectronics Group. Previously he worked in universities and research laboratories across Europe and in the USA. He has 25 years experience (and over 300 publications) in many aspects of photonics and has helped pioneer a number of developments in fibre gratings, photonic band gap materials, acousto-optic fibre devices, nonlinear optics and periodically poled materials. He is the founding chair of the Optical Society of America's Topical Meeting Series on Bragg Gratings, Photosensitivity and Poling in Glass. He is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America and in 2000 won its Joseph Fraunhofer Award/Robert M. Burley Prize for his invention of photonic crystal ("holey") fibre. In 2002 he won the Applied Optics Division Prize of the Institute of Physics. His work on photonic crystals (both in films and fibres) is recognised by a continuing series of plenary, keynote and invited talks at conferences and summer schools all over the world. Description: Photonic crystal fibers (PCFs - sometimes also known as "holey" or "microstructured" fibers) have been the focus of increasing scientific and technological interest since the first working example was produced in late 1995. Although superficially similar to a conventional optical fiber, PCF has a unique microstructure, consisting of an array of microscopic holes (or channels) that runs along the entire length of the fiber. These holes act as optical barriers or scatterers, which suitably arranged can "corral" light within a central core (either hollow or made of solid glass). The holes can range in diameter from ~25 nm to ~50 mm. Although most PCF is formed in pure silica glass, it has also recently been made using polymers and non-silica glasses, where it is difficult to find compatible core and cladding materials suitable for conventional total internal reflection guidance. PCF supports two guidance mechanisms: total internal reflection, in which case the core must have a higher average refractive index than the holey cladding; and a two-dimensional photonic bandgap, when the index of the core is uncritical - it can be hollow or filled with material. Light can be controlled and transformed in these fibers with unprecedented freedom, allowing for example the guiding of light in a hollow core, the creation of highly nonlinear solid cores with anomalous dispersion in the visible and the design of fibers that support only one transverse spatial mode at all wavelengths. Applications are emerging in many diverse areas of science and technology. For example, as first shown by Ranka et al, an ultra-small core fibre made from solid glass and surrounded by very large air-holes can be arranged to have a zero chromatic dispersion wavelength in the 800 nm Ti:sapphire band. This fibre produces spectacular spectral broadening of high repetition rate 100 fsec pulses, with a brightness some 10,000¡Ñ brighter than the sun and a similar bandwidth. This source is transforming the fields of optical coherence tomography, spectroscopy and frequency metrology. In its hollow core form, PCF also solves a key long-standing challenge in photonics, for which there is no good conventional solution: How to force light to interact - strongly, reproducibly and over long path-lengths - with low-density materials such as gases, vapours and liquids. This is an exciting development with major implications for numerous gas-based nonlinear optical and laser devices. Recently a hydrogen Raman cell was demonstrated with a threshold energy of 800 nJ - some 100¡Ñ lower than previously reported. In September 2002, breakthrough losses of 0.58 dB/km for solid-core PCF, and 13 dB/km for hollow-core PCF, were reported by respectively by teams at BlazePhotonics and Corning. These two examples illustrate how the PCF concept is ushering in a new and more versatile era of fibre optics, with a multitude of different applications spanning many areas of science and technology. |