Awarded european ERC grant to Marta De Luca, starting in December
Marta De Luca was awarded with the prestigious ERC Starting grant from the European Community. The 5-years long project will be carried out in our Department with a funding of € 1.5 million, and it’s starting in December. The project, NANOWHYR (Dots-in-NANOWires by near-field illumination: novel single-photon sources for HYbRid quantum photonic circuits), aims at creating novel single photon sources integrated with Si-based photonic circuits. Quantum technologies, which include computation and quantum communication, make it possible to carry out operations characterized by significantly higher performance and security than the classic ones. Photonic circuits based on the generation, manipulation and detection of single photons are one of the most promising candidates for the practical realization of quantum technologies.
Currently there are devices based on Silicon, the material of excellence for electronics, which are able to manipulate and detect single photons with high efficiency and low cost. However, the limit to be overcome in Silicon-based photonics remains the generation of single photons, as Silicon is not an optically efficient material. NANOWHYR aims to overcome this limitation by creating new quantum dots in III-V semiconductor nanowires integrated with Si-based cavities. The creation will involve hydrogen irradiation and annealing through scanning near field optical microscope. This multi-disciplinary project involves challenges in the fields of materials science, physics, and nanotechnology, and is expected to open new scientific and technological horizons in the field of quantum optics and integrated photonics on Silicon.
The NANO-OPTICS group led by Marta De Luca is looking for 2 PhD students and 2 Post-docs to work on this new project.
For more information, contact: marta.deluca@uniroma1.it