Mher Ghulinyan
28 July - 01 August 2025
Yerevan State University
Yerevan, Armenia
Events
Mher Ghulinyan
Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Italy
Reconfigurable Integrated Photonic-Electronic Circuits
In this lecture, I will introduce the main technological tools used to build a photonic-electronic integrated platform for classical and quantum optical simulations. By combining mature silicon microelectronic and silicon nitride quantum micro-photonic functions onto a unique semiconductor platform, we realize planar photonic circuitries integrated monolithically with Si photodiodes and single-photon detectors, operating at room temperature. The reconfigurability of the photonic architecture is provided by tiny micro-heaters, which allow hundreds of optical phase-shifting elements to be set within a 1 cm2 area chip: this allows the flow of photons to be directed along different paths, creating sequences of quantum logic gates, the equivalents of transistors in an integrated electronic circuit.
About the Speaker
Mher Ghulinyan, M.S. in 1995 and Doctoral degree in physics in 1999 from the Yerevan State University. His early-career research in Silicon Photonics at the University of Trento (Italy) brought to the first-time demonstrations of fundamental phenomena in optical superlattices: photonic Bloch oscillations and resonant Zener tunneling, Anderson localization of light, and observation of Optical Necklace States. Currently, he is a Senior researcher at the Sensors & Devices Centre of Fondazione Bruno Kessler (Italy). His interests are in the field of Planar Integrated Lightwave Circuits with a particular focus on integrated Silicon-based reconfigurable Quantum Photonics. For several years, he has held the course of Photonics at the University of Trento. He is a Senior member of the OSA, member of the EU Quantum Coordination Board, active reviewer for NPG, OSA, and APS. He has authored books and several book chapters, more than 140 research papers, and invented several patents. He has coordinated the EU-H2020 project EPIQUS - Electronic-photonic integrated quantum simulator platform.
