Alejandro Yacomotti
Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (CNRS-University Paris-Saclay), Université Côte d’Azur, Institut de Physique de Nice - alejandro.giacomotti@c2n.upsaclay.frK. Ji, F. Hentinger, M. Hedir, F. Monti, B. Garbin, F. Raineri, J. A. Levenson and A. M. Yacomotti
Nanolasers are most appealing candidates for integrated nanosources on photonic microchips because of their ability to operate in the so-called thresholdless regime, compatible with ultra-low energy consumption operation. Remarkably, nanolaser technology has experimented a huge progress in the recent years, and today, a myriad of cavity designs and materials come to maturity. In this talk I will focus on III-V semiconductor photonic crystal nanolasers, particularly appealing for their ultra-small foot print and high speed. After a brief review on the important breakthroughs with this technology, I will discuss two particular applications of small sets of coupled nanolasers in the context of non-linear and non-Hermitian photonics: spontaneous mirror symmetry breaking and zero-mode lasing. Finally, I will introduce larger nanolaser arrays as promising platforms to realize novel protocols for optical computing exploiting the underlying non-Hermitian lattice symmetries.
Tenured researcher at C2N (DR2 in 2021), former researcher at LPN (Marcoussis) since 2007. His domain of research is nonlinear dynamics and quantum optics in nanophotonics. Among his main contributions are the first demonstrations of excitability in photonic crystal resonators (2006, 2012), as well as the recent achievement of spontaneous symmetry breaking in coupled photonic crystal nanocavities (2015, 2022). Since 2007 he has been involved in many collaborative research projects on nonlinear nanophotonics in France, as well as in international projects; he has coordinated the ANR PCR Project “UNIQ” that ended in 2021, which also dealt with nonlinear coupled nanocavities in the context of emergent quantum phenomena.