Manipulating light from a single photon to complex beams and wave packets, and their novel applications.

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Today more than ever, society relies on the Internet to move information over the world. All-optical signal generation and processing is one of the foundation stones of fiber-based telecommunication systems (the backbone of both the Internet and today’s digital economy), where these operations have been highly successful at enabling a vast array of key technologies. Among those, the multiplexing and de-multiplexing of optical signals is perhaps one of the biggest achievements, allowing transfer of information at unprecedented speeds. This technique is based on a very simple but effective operation principle: instead of coding long trains of pulses at extremely high repetition rates (which are very demanding to generate and process), slower pulse trains of very many (hundreds) of colors (wavelengths) are generated and processed separately yet in parallel, thus delivering the same amount of information at much lower repetition rates in each channel, resulting in a significantly easier handling of the optical signal. Another potential concept, which is hoped to be an additional foundation stone, is the introduction of quantum information optics into real-world telecommunication systems. In quantum information, the classical bit (zeros and ones, e.g. the absence or presence of an optical pulse containing many photons) is replaced by a quantum state, holding a quantum information unit known as the qubit. Due to the nature of quantum mechanics, no measurement can be performed without altering the quantum system (read qubit) and this means that in principle any tampering (even just listening) of a message must leave a trace. For this reason, quantum technology forms the basis of real secure data transfer. This is why, in order to accommodate future demands in terms of data volume and of security, the holy grail of next-generation telecommunication networks will be to combine the technology of quantum information with that of multiplexing technologies. Given this unquestionable interest, I have recently developed at INRS-EMT a vigorous research program in photonics and in particular, in integrated optics, towards reaching this important objective. In the framework of the present Discovery Grant, I intend to shed some light onto the relation between quantum mechanics, wave optics and (integrated) optoelectronics to investigate two fundamental aspects related to the control of light. Specifically, in the next five years, I will study: 1) the possibility of creating the first device, based on the use of glass integrated ring resonators, capable of generating several tens of MULTIPLEXED QUANTUM CORRELATED photon pairs (compatible with quantum memories) and 2) using the property of the so-called Airy beams and pulses (which are both self-bending/accelerating and self-healing, i.e. they can be regenerated even when perturbed) to i) overcome the well-known material constrains affecting the most important nonlinear processes, including frequency conversion and ii) to develop novel energy transfer mechanisms. The benefits related to such an ambitious research program are twofold: not only will it pave the way to the development of new advanced technologies, consistent with the IMMEDIATE needs of the Canadian digital economy, but it will also promote the training of highly qualified personnel to respond to the scientific and technological challenges of our modern society.