Programmable Laser Beam Shaping Tools for Exciton-Polariton Quantum Simulators

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

I request two spatial light modulators (SLMs), programmable optical beam shaping tools that can support our on-going project of building exciton-polariton quantum simulators (QS) as a next-generation high-performance computing platform. At the heart of the Information age, various formats of data are generated and handled as common audio or video signals, texts, and emails. And complex and big data are necessary to satisfy growing demands of information sharing in modern society. Moreover, the size of these data increases almost double up every year. Hence, high performance computing technologies are on high demand that aim to handle big sized data efficiently and to solve highly complicated computation problems controllably. Our group has been developing a photonic computing platform based on exciton-polaritons that can offer promising computational advantages from the system traits of nonlinearity and strong light-matter interactions through series of theoretical and experimental research activities for many years.   So far, we built prototypes of an exciton-polariton QS in fixed geometries using semiconductor material growth and device nanofabrication processing techniques. We characterized them optically to understand the basic operation principles, system dynamics, node connectivity and node-to-node coupling. Now we need to formulate practical applications to establish programmable exciton-polariton photonic QS. A critical technique for successful technological transition is reversible programmability and dynamical control of lasers in our optical setup because this allows us to study various types of situations readily.   We identify that the SLM is the best solution to our needs as a well-established optical technology to design laser beam profiles for defining a single site and for patterning multiple arrays of each site. Furthermore, we request two SLMs in order to engineer two opposite polarization states of lasers independently at the same time to represent binary states as a basic information unit. The high reflectivity of the proposed SLM models is desirable to control the laser power range widely so that we can exploit the full laser capacity and nonlinearity as a new functionality. Therefore, our selected SLM model can allow us to achieve all necessary technical specifications to create densely packed node arrays which are suitable for complex and large-scale problems. Since the SLM is regarded as state-of-the art quantum optical technologies to control lasers and quantum systems spatially and temporally, it is critical that students acquire hands-on experience in this advanced optical technology for their global leadership in quantum computing sectors. With the SLMs, our programmable exciton-polariton QS will pave ways to construct a powerful and competent photonic computing platform in a timely action with fast speed and compact footprints for favorable commercial implementation.