Nonlinear Photonics (NP)

Nonlinear Photonics

The topics are grouped in 5 main categories:

1. Nonlinear Closed Optical Systems

• Temporal effects:
  • Nonlinear pulse propagation in optical fibers and waveguides
  • Modulational instability, temporal solitons and their interaction and control
  • Nonlinear pulse shaping, self-accelerating pulses and pulse train generation
  • Supercontinuum phenomena, harmonic generation, frequency conversion, UV and X-ray generation, and optics of few cycle pulses
  • Dispersion engineering and nonlinear phase matching
  • Rogue and shock waves, dispersive wave generation, wave turbulence
  • Ultrashort pulse modelling beyond the slowly-varying envelope approximation
• Spatial effects:
  • Spatial optical solitons, self-trapping, and self-guiding effects
  • Nonlinear modes and self trapping and solitons in discrete media, waveguide arrays and multimode fibers                    
  • Nonlinear surface waves and topological states
  • Nonlinear singular optics
  • Self-accelerating beams and novel beam shaping techniques
  • Optical analogues of gravity
  • Structured light
• Spatio-temporal effects:
  • Spatio-temporal solitons, X waves, non-diffracting beams
  • Filamentation, collapse, shock waves and extreme events 
  • Spatio-temporal beam dynamics in photonic structures
  • Nonlinear effects in disordered media, wave turbulence
  • Spatio-temporal dynamics in nonlinear multimode fibers
• Parametric and stimulated scattering in photonic structures:
  • Nonlinear optoacoustic interactions
  • Optomechanics, stimulated Brillouin and Raman scattering
  • Down and up conversion, including difference and sum of frequencies
• Nonlinear diffractive effects in photonic crystals and interactions in periodic structures:
  • Bragg gratings in fibers and semiconductor waveguides
  • Nonlinear effects in photonic crystals and Bragg gratings, slow light
  • Bragg solitons and gap solitons in photonic crystals
  • Devices based on nonlinear interactions in gratings

2. Nonlinear Open Optical Systems

• Nonlinear interactions in optical cavities and microresonators:
  • Patterns, fronts and domains in nonlinear cavities and waveguides
  • Mode locking and dissipative spatial or temporal solitons
  • Polarization effects and vector solitons
  • Vortex solitons, optical turbulence, rogue waves and extreme events
  • Parabolic and self-similar pulses
  • Nonlinear dynamics and pattern formation in active media, semiconductor lasers
  • Optical frequency combs in microcavities and in passive/active fiber cavities, cavity solitons
• Waveguides and resonators with gain and loss:
  • Nonlinear effects in parity-time symmetric structures
  • Nonlinear optical switching and unidirectional phenomena
  • Supersymmetry and lasers
  • Nonlinear waveguide amplifiers and amplifier solitons
  • Short pulse and quasi-CW fiber lasers
• Nonlinear light-matter interactions and phase transitions in cavities:
  • Exciton-polaritons in semiconductor microcavities
  • Cold atoms and Bose-Einstein Condensates in optical lattices and cavities
  • Nonlinear modes and light-matter solitons
  • Synchronization, coherence and laser threshold
  • Condensation with and without dissipation
  • Symmetry breaking phenomena
• Active devices and lasers:
  • Laser dynamics, feedback effects, chaos
  • Models for lasers and amplifiers
  • Mode locking, new techniques
  • Novel laser structures and applications, lasers with novel functionality
  • Random lasers
  • Vertical cavity surface emitting lasers, external cavity and photonic crystal lasers
  • Nanolasers
  • Droplet lasers
  • Semiconductor devices (SOAs, LDs, VCSELs, VECSELs, QCLs)
  • Laser frequency combs
  • Raman lasers

3. Nonlinear nanophotonics, metamaterials, 2D materials and plasmonics

• Nonlinear properties of plasmonic materials:
  • Nonlinearity enhancement
  • Surface nonlinearity
  • Nonlocal effects
  • Ultrafast phenomena
• Nonlinear scattering by nanoparticles:
  • Harmonic generation
  • Frequency mixing
  • Optical modulation
• Nonlinear metamaterials and metasurfaces:
  • Nonlinear interactions and propagation in metamaterials
  • Nonlinearity enhancement
  • Dispersion engineering and nonlinear phase matching
• Nonlinear effects in 2D materials:
  • Nonlinear interactions in graphene and other two-dimensional materials
  • Topological phenomena
  • Nonlinear saturation, carrier effects and excitonic phenomena
  • Bandgap engineering and doping for nonlinearity enhancement
  • Perturbative and/or non-perturbative nonlinearities
  • Hybrid 2D material structures
• Numerical simulations of nonlinear processes:
  • Finite-difference time domain methods
  • Boundary and/or volume element methods
  • Hybrid numerical methods
  • Pseudo-spectral methods
  • Novel algorithms for nanophotonic simulations

4.  Nonlinear optical devices and applications

• Nonlinear devices and systems:
  • All-optical communications devices and systems
  • All-optical wavelength conversion and signal regeneration
  • Ultrafast switching and packet-switching
  • All-optical signal processing and logic functions
  • Optical storage and memory
  • Slow-light phenomena
  • Optical beam cleaning
  • Dielectric and plasmonic metadevices
  • Microwave photonics
  • Ultra-short and ultra-long wavelength generation
• Application and Industry:
  • Second harmonic generation
  • Frequency conversion
  • Quasi-phase-matching
  • Cascaded nonlinearities
  • Machine learning applications in nonlinear optics
  • Photonic computing, Ising machines and neuromorphic devices
  • Nonlinear activation layers for neural networks
• Measurements and microscopy:
  • Nonlinear measurement and detection
  • Nonlinear biophotonic devices
  • Ultrashort pulse characterization (e.g., FROG, SPIDER)
  • Optical sampling
  • Multiphoton microscopy       
  • All-optical monitoring
  • Nonlinear spectroscopy
  • Advanced imaging techniques, scattering assisted imaging, ghost imaging and superfocusing
  • Sensing
  • Optical trapping and manipulation
• Novel nonlinear materials:
  • Highly nonlinear waveguides and speciality waveguides (e.g. novel glasses and nano and microstructured fibers)
  • Nonlinear crystals (including photorefractive effects)
  • Nonlinear semiconductors
  • Quantum-dot materials
  • Graphene and other 2D materials
  • Polymers and organics for waveguides
  • Fabrication of novel materials and structures
  • Physics and chemistry of poling including thermal and UV-assisted poling 
• System modelling:
  • Stochastic effects in communication systems and error estimates
  • Advanced modulation formats
  • Nonlinearities in spatial and mode division multiplexing fiber systems
  • Mitigation of fiber nonlinearity impairments in coherent transmission systems
  • Nonlinear Fourier transform for optical communications
  • Optical networks

5. Quantum Optics

• Quantum Optics:
  • Generation of single photons
  • Generation and characterization of squeezed, entangled, and other nonclassical states of light
  • Photonic transduction
  • Single-photon interactions/nonlinearities
  • Wave mixing with faint light
  • Quantum technologies
  • Cold atoms and Bose–Einstein Condensates in optical lattices and cavities
  • Quantum plasmonics, including electron–plasmon interactions
  • Quantum optics in integrated circuits and nanofibers
• Quantum information:
  • Quantum computing
  • Quantum photonic chips
  • Quantum communications and cryptography
  • Quantum imaging
  • Teleportation
  • Quantum sensing
  • Quantum metrology