Applied Physics Seminar
Dirk Englund received his BS in Physics from Caltech in 2002. Following a year at TU Eindhoven as a Fulbright Fellow, he earned his MS in EE and PhD in Applied Physics from Stanford University in 2008. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University until 2010, when he became Assistant Professor of E.E. and Applied Physics at Columbia University. He moved to MIT in 2013 as Assistant Professor in EECS. Recent recognitions include the 2011 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the 2011 Sloan Research Fellowship in Physics, the 2012 DARPA Young Faculty Award, a 2012 IBM Faculty Award, a 2016 R&D100 Award, the 2017 Adolph Lomb Medal, and the 2017 ACS Photonics Young Investigator Award.
The Internet is among the most significant inventions of the 20th Century. We are now poised for the development of a quantum internet to exchange quantum information and distribute entanglement among quantum memories (and ultimately quantum computers) that could be great distances apart. This kind of quantum internet would have a range of applications that aren't possible in a classical world, including long-distance unconditionally-secure communication, certain types of precision sensing and navigation, and distributed quantum computing. But we still need to develop or perfect many types of components and protocols to build such a quantum internet. This talk will consider some of these components, focusing on photonic integrated circuits, diamond spin-based quantum memories, and prototype networks. Specifically, the first part of this talk will review our recent progress in adapting one of the leading PIC architectures—silicon photonics—for different types of quantum secure communications protocols. The second part of the talk will consider how photonic integrated circuits technology may extend the reach of quantum communications through all-optical and memory-based quantum repeaters, as well as extensions to modular quantum computers.
**Refreshments will be served at 3:30pm in 113 Spalding Laboratory