All posts by stevenkye

Invited paper in Optical Materials Express

We are excited to share our invited paper in the optomechanical photonics special issue of Optical Materials Express, titled “Brillouin nonlinearity characterizations of a high refractive index silicon oxynitride platform”.

In this paper, we explore the operating principles of an ultra-sensitive triple-intensity-modulated lock-in amplifier setup for Brillouin characterization, packed with a lot of practical experimental tips throughout.

Congrats Steven!

Michael Steel visit our lab

Prof. Michael Steel from the Macquarie University visit our lab this month. During his visit, we had a great discussion about our latest Brillouin photonics results, and he shared some really insightful feedback. Thank you for visiting us, Mike!

group photo with Prof. Steel (second from the left)

ECIO 2024

This week, we attended the 2024 European Conference on Integrated Optics in Aachen, Germany. We got the opportunity to present and discuss the latest progress happening in our group with four oral and three poster presentations.

  • Shangqing presented a simultaneous Notch Filtering and True Time Delay RF Photonic Front-end on the Si3N4 platform.
  • Maarten demonstrated an RF photonic self-interference cancellation system, also on the Si3N4​ platform.
  • Chuangchuang showcased a Microwave Photonic (MWP) Notch Filter using Thin-Film Lithium Niobate (TFLN).
  • Zheng presented work on thermoelastic acousto-optic modulation in TFLN.
  • Steven discussed Brillouin-based applications in TFLN.
  • Yvan provided insights into SBS characterizations and Brillouin-based applications in tellurite-covered Si3​N4.
  • Akhil demonstrated an SBS-based MWP notch filter in tellurite-covered Si3​N4.

Congrats all for these beautiful results!

New visiting student: Dharma Prasetya Permana

We welcome Dharma Prasetya Permana to join our group as an intern for the next few months.

Dharma obtained his BSc in Physics from Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), Indonesia in 2023. Before he starts his Erasmus Mundus Joint Master EuroPhotonics program in September 2024, he will work with Yvan on the four-wave mixing experiments in our group.

Good luck, Dharma! Hope you will enjoy your time here!

New publication in APL Photonics

We are pleased to share a new publication of our paper at APL Photonics , titled “Observation of a Brillouin dynamic grating in silicon nitride waveguides”. In this paper, we report the first ever observation of Brillouin dynamic gratings in silicon nitride waveguides. Congrats Roel and Jasper!

Principle of the Brillouin dynamic gratings

Roel graduated

On March 25th, Roel successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis titled “Stimulated Brillouin scattering in silicon nitride based waveguides”.

Roel’s contributions to research in our group over the past few years have been remarkable. He unlocked the first on-chip stimulated Brillouin scattering signal in our group. Additionally, he advanced the SBS signal by employing tellurite-covered silicon nitride waveguides. Furthermore, he explored new Brillouin-based applications, i.e. Brillouin dynamic gratings.

Roel will start his new career as the integrated optics system architect at LioniX. Congrats, Roel! And good luck!

Roel (center) with his paranymphs Yvan(right) and Robert (left) before the defense
Roel with the committee members and his girlfriend after the successful defense

WOMBAT workshop

Last week, Yvan and Steven attended the 5th International Workshop on OptoMechanics and Brillouin-Mandelstam Scattering (WOMBAT) in Campinas, Brazil.

It is an outstanding workshop with a lot of interesting talks. From our side, Yvan contributed an oral contribution about SBS in the tellurite-covered silicon nitride waveguides. In the meantime, Steven presented a poster about the overview of the SBS characterization activities in the scalable photonic integrated platform.

Yvan is giving the oral presentation

Roadmapping day 2024

The first NLNP roadmapping day was successfully held on January 19, 2024. We summarized the research activities in the last year and discussed goals for the near-term and long-term future. It is a truly fun day filled with new ideas and nice food. Thanks, Zheng and Carla for organizing it!

Group dinner after the full-day discussions

Randy graduated

On December 15th, Randy te Morsche successfully defended his Master’s project on “Stimulated Brillouin scattering and lasing in tellurite-covered silicon nitride photonics”. He worked on this project with his daily supervisor Yvan Klaver, and they have made great progress together.

Congrats, Randy! Enjoy your short break before rejoining us for the Ph.D. project next year!

Randy (left) received two physics books and one comics as graduation gifts from the group