HYBRID: Let there be sound! – Photonic machine learning and quantum signal processing mediated by acoustic waves

This lecture will be held in presence at Magnus-Haus and can be followed online at the same time. Use the links above to register your attendance in person on site or to receive access data for online attendance. No admission after the start of the event. Please do not participate if you have symptoms of a respiratory infection (cold symptoms).

Topic: Photonics has the potential to advance modern quantum technologies and neuromorphic computing. However, to replace or improve the well-established systems with photonic solutions, there is still a way to go. A promising approach to manipulate light all-optically is to use the link of optical waves with acoustic vibrations. We experimentally investigate how traveling sound waves can be used to process states of light in the classical and quantum regime.  We implement several building blocks for photonic machine learning, such as an optoacoustic recurrent operator and a photonic activation function for all-optical neural networks. We demonstrate non-reciprocal processing of orbital angular momentum states and show how photon-phonon entanglement and phonon cooling via stimulated Brillouin scattering is implemented in continuum systems like waveguides and optical fibers.

CV: Birgit Stiller is an experimental physicist. She is a W3 full professor at Leibniz University Hannover and the leader of an independent Max Planck Research Group on “Quantum Optoacoustics” at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light (MPL) in Erlangen. From 2015 to 2019 she held a position as Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Sydney, Australia, working on integrated photonic circuits. Before that she was a Postdoctoral Researcher in the field of quantum communications, specifically quantum key distribution and quantum hacking. She received her PhD from the CNRS Institute FEMTO-ST in Besancon, France. Her group’s current aim is to use light-sound interactions for quantum technologies and photonic neuromorphic computing.

Following the lecture, there will be a get-together where participants can exchange ideas with each other over pizza and drinks in the Remise and the garden of the Magnus-Haus.

The event is sponsored by the Wilhelm and Else Heraeus Foundation.