Vishal Dattathreya
Research Mentor(s): Zheshen Zhang
Mentor Department: Electrical and Computer Engineering
Authors: Vishal Dattathreya, Shuai Liu, Zheshen Zhang
Session: Session 7 (4:00pm – 4: 50pm)
Presentation Type: Poster 31
Abstract
In quantum mechanics, dispersion occurs when a wave travels through a medium at different speeds depending on its wavelength. This metric can provide valuable insights into the behavior of a wave, and can be calculated by measuring the frequency difference between the resonant wavelengths of a wave passing through a given medium. To find the resonant wavelengths for a custom-manufactured photonic chip, the chip is placed between two optical fibers: one connected to a tunable semiconductor laser (TSL), and the other connected to an oscilloscope. The TSL emits a laser beam that sweeps a defined range of wavelengths, and is split with one part of the beam being routed to a radio frequency comb generator, and the other to an input waveguide of the photonic chip. The oscilloscope then records the waveforms from both the chip’s corresponding output waveguide, as well as the generated RF comb. This waveform data can now be used to calculate the distance between resonant dips in the photonic chip output data, using the consistent RF comb pulses as a standard unit of measurement. To simplify this task, two Python scripts were developed to automate the process of running a trial of this experiment, by controlling the TSL with user-inputted parameters and automatically filtering the waveform data from the oscilloscope to include only the relevant output from the TSL sweep. These scripts improve the time required to collect and process output waveform data, and improve accuracy in identifying resonant wavelengths.
