Photonics, the science of light, has become one of the key technologies both in fundamental and applied research, demonstrated by a plethora of innovative concepts and products which rival those of the microelectronics industry in overall market share. This special research program (SFB) "Next Generation Light Synthesis and Interactions" will lay the groundwork for how to generate, manipulate, and operate with light in a future generation of photonics devices.
The concept of this SFB is to combine the existing expertise and infrastructure developed within the successful SFB ADLIS ("Advanced Light Sources"), with complimentary expertise that has become available to the Austrian photonics community through recent appointments. The knowledge available in this interdisciplinary partnership of several experimental and theoretical groups in Graz, Innsbruck and Vienna will be focused on the following three core areas: (1) Light Synthesis: Emphasis will be put on the generation of coherent light, in continuous wave operation (with novel quantum cascade laser designs) and in the area of ultra-short and high-intensity pulses (as realized with femtosecond pulse laser amplification technology). We will advance the knowledge and methods for constructing efficient, custom-designed photon sources. This research will be complemented by studies in the newly emerging fields of plasmon generation in nano-particles, coherent exciton-polariton emission from micro-cavities and micro-wave quantum circuits. (2) Cavities are the fundamental building blocks in photonics which allow to store, to emit, to amplify and to couple light in a controlled fashion. To optimize these functionalities we will investigate novel cavity designs such as ring, bottle fiber or strip line resonators as well as the nonlinear effects induced by the coupling between multiple resonators. (3) Light-matter interaction lies at the core of what needs to be understood for operating with light on small scales. We will study here, in particular, the effects of very strong and short light pulses, the gain dynamics in quantum cascade lasers as well as the strong coupling of light with matter (polaritons, NV-centers, quantized transitions).
The strength of the proposed SFB collaboration lies in the substantial scientific expertise that its individual groups have aggregated, ranging from the quantum optics aspects of light-matter interaction to the design and fabrication of functional photonic devices. We aim to profit from synergies arising from the complementary backgrounds of the participating groups by focusing on projects for which pooling the diverse expertise is essential. The proven track record of successful collaborations among many of the involved groups holds the promise to create a photonics consortium in Austria which has the necessary critical mass for scientific breakthroughs and for attaining high scientific visibility.