Founder of OptoSapiens Design (www.optosapiens.com)
& Representative for Photon Design (www.photond.com) Thursday, May 17th, 2007 4:00pm – Applied Physics Building, Room 299 Demo/Q&A from 3:00-4:00pm & 5:00-5:30pm, AP 299
State-of-the-art multi-parameter design optimization - local and global - can both facilitate the development of innovative lightguiding structures and drastically reduce the design cycle times for photonic devices and circuits. As an illustrative example we consider application to tapered lightguide injectors coupling into compact photonic crystal micro-circuits involving y-junctions and bends. We also show how appropriate choice of electromagnetic field propagation engines such as the Eigen-Mode Expansion (EME), the Finite-Difference Time Domain (FDTD) and other methods can facilitate the understanding of the physics of electromagnetic field propagation considering modal interferometry and the adiabatic and sudden approximation limits. The approach is particularly valuable from the educational and research viewpoints as well as helpful in practical industrial device optimization.
Dr. Black will be available in AP 299 before and after the seminar to demonstrate Photon Design software and answer questions. The software includes CrystalWave and OmniSim (using general purpose time-domain and frequency-domain solvers, as well as FIMMWAVE (a power mode solver), FIMMPROP (wave propagation using Eigen-Mode Expansion (EME)), Kallistos (state-of-the-art optimization), and Cladiss (for semiconductor laser modeling).
Dr. Richard J. Black obtained his PhD in optical fiber and waveguide modeling from the Australian National University (ANU) in 1984 and has spent the subsequent 23 years in academia and industry working with leading international groups in photonics in telecom, sensing and optical signal processing applications. For example, Richard researched and taught at the École Polytechnique de Montréal pioneering work on tapered and fused fiber components, was Invited Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, has held visiting positions at Stanford, University of Arizona, ANU, Università di Padova, CNET, etc., and has worked with a range of start-up and other companies in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. In addition to his work at the device modeling level with Photon Design Richard also works on optical fiber sensor systems as Chief Scientist for Intelligent Fiber Optic Systems which produces fiber Bragg grating sensor interrogators and Raman-based distributed temperature sensor systems.
This seminar also owes much to Richard’s colleagues at Photon Design, especially (1) Founder & CEO, Dr. Dominic Gallagher (a laser physicist) who did his PhD at Cambridge University, UK followed by work on optical logic and gain switching, and two years at the Fraunhofer Institute, helping to develop some of the world’s fastest laser diodes and also working on inter-sub-band photodetectors, before founding Photon Design in 1991, and (2) Dr. Tom Felici (a mathematician) who did his Cambridge PhD in magnetohydrodynamics followed by 8 years lecturing in optimization theory before joining Photon Design to lead development of FIMMPROP & Kallistos.