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Talk Title: Emerging paradigms in photonic emulation
Abstract: Using analogies in various disciplines of science and technology provides a valuable strategy for advancing our understanding of complex phenomena and for developing counterintuitive functionalities. Photonics represents a prime example of how this approach can be successfully deployed, where the versatility of its associated platforms enables emulating the behavior of a wide range of systems. By unlocking the full potential of photons and harnessing the full power of their multiple degrees of freedom, the ramifications of this prospect have come to fruition on multiple fronts in the general area of optics.
In the first part of this talk, I will discuss a class of versatile photonic emulator platforms that we leverage to explore a series of elusive phenomena associated with peculiarities of the adiabatic theorem in non-Hermitian systems, and computationally intractable problems in many-body physics that are challenging to study in other settings. Such synthetic dimension platforms exploit the isomorphism between the Schrödinger equation and the paraxial wave equation, as well as the thermodynamic response of nonlinearly interacting highly multimoded configurations. In the second half of this talk, I will present how the emulation of emerging concepts from condensed matter physics and quantum mechanics, such as topological insulators, parity-time symmetric configurations, and valleytronics, can inspire new functionalities in optics. These schemes open new frontiers for light-matter interaction in miniaturized structures and enable unexpected dynamics with no counterpart in conventional arrangements. Finally, I will provide a brief outlook on a multifaceted integrated platform capable of emulating a variety of phenomena heralding from other branches of physics, resulting in new paradigms in photonic emulation.
Biography: Hadiseh Nasari received her Ph.D. degree in 2017 in Electrical Engineering with the highest honors (summa cum laude) from Iran. Between 2018 and 2020 she pursued postdoctoral studies at the University of California in San Diego and Berkeley. Subsequently, she joined the University of Southern California (USC) where she is currently serving as a postdoctoral research associate. Between 2020 and 2022, she was holding a joint position as a visiting research scientist at CREOL-The College of Optics & Photonics, at UCF. Her research interests include topological photonics, non-Hermitian physics, nonlinear optics, nanophotonics, 2D and van der Waals crystals, computational electromagnetics, and photonic emulators.
Dr. Nasari is the recipient of a Marie-Curie actions seal of excellence in 2019, of the 2018 Dr. Kazemi Ashtiani Award from Iran’s National Elites’ Foundation (INEF), and of a special award of INEF from 2015 to 2018. She has translated “Fundamentals of Photonics” by Prof. Saleh from English to Persian and serves as a regular reviewer for various journals and a committee member in Optica conferences and meetings.