Contact IEEE SCV LEOS for event and ticket information.
Tuesday, August 05, 2008 from 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM (PT)
Prof. John O'Brien, University of Southern California
IEEE LEOS Distinguished Lecturer
"Photonic Crystal Devices"
ABSTRACT
Two-dimensional photonic crystal devices take advantage of our ability
to pattern the dielectric, through nanofabrication techniques, on a
scale that is shorter than the optical wavelength at which the device
operates. Patterning on this length scale allows us, in principle, to
engineer the electromagnetic properties of photonic devices in
microscopic detail. It is a serious challenge, however, to understand
how to utilize this freedom to improve device performance, and this
photonic crystal device technology is still relatively immature.
Nevertheless, a great deal of progress in photonic crystal device
development has been made in the past few years.
In this presentation Prof. O'Brien will discuss photonic crystal lasers
with particular emphasis on devices capable of room temperature CW
operation and devices with quantum dot active regions. CW lasers have
-3dB modulation bandwidths over 10 GHz with approximately 30dB of side
mode suppression. The photonic crystal lasers with quantum dot active
regions have absorbed powers at threshold of under 15 microwatts. The
presentation will also describe approaches to increasing the output
power obtained from these lasers illustrated with data showing 100
microwatts of pulsed output power from a microcavity photonic crystal
laser.
The presentation will also address device issues associated with
passive photonic crystal components such as optical loss, waveguide
dispersion, and the design of waveguide junctions. Demonstrations of
Mach-Zehnder interferometers and directional couplers will be presented
and again results from experiments will be compared to numerical
predictions.
BIO
Prof. John O'Brien received the B.S. degree from Iowa State University
in electrical engineering in 1991 and the M.S. and Ph. D. degrees in
applied physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1993 and
1996, respectively.
In 1997 he joined the Department of Electrical Engineering at the
University of Southern California as an Assistant Professor. In 1999 he
received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and
Engineers, and in 2000 he was awarded an NSF Career award. In 2003 he
became an Associate Professor, and he was promoted to Professor of
Electrical Engineering in 2006. His research interests are in
nanophotonics and photonic crystal devices.
Dr. O'Brien is a senior member of IEEE and a Fellow of the Optical
Society of America. He is currently an Associate Editor of IEEE
Transaction on Nanotechnology. He has served on the Conference on
Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO) Subcommittee on Optical Materials,
Fabrication and Characterization from 2003-2005, the Integrated
Photonics Research (IPR) Subcommittee on Nanophotonics for 2004, 2005,
the Technical Program Committee for the Device Research Conference for
2004, 2005, the Technical Program Committee for the Information
Photonics Conference for 2005, and the Semiconductor Laser Committee
for the IEEE Lasers and Electro-Optics Society (LEOS) annual meeting
for 1998-2002, 2005-2007. He also served as the organizer and chair of
the Photonic Lattices sessions at the 2000 and 2002 Laser Workshops and
was the Co-Organizer of the Photonic Crystals Sessions at the
Electronic Materials Conference (EMC) for 2002.
