Stoney's British Pub
3007 Concord Pike
Wilmington, DE
7:30pm
Neil MacFarlaneUniversity of Pennsylvania
“Communicating using Light at the Nanoscale”
Since the 1960s light has been used to encode and transmit information through fiber optic technology. In the same way that miniaturization of electronic chips has allowed for increases in processing power and decreases in power consumption, the field of integrated photonics has similarly revolutionized optical systems. Integrated photonics is a field that dates back to the 1980s and focuses on the design and fabrication of chip scale optical systems consisting of many components with critical dimensions at the nanometer scale. In this talk, I will first introduce the field of integrated photonics, some fundamental components, and explain how we can confine, control, and process light on integrated photonic chips. Finally, I will talk about how integrated photonic chips are used in modern communication systems.