MIT.nano Seminar Series: Boubacar Kanté

Boubacar Kanté, the Chenming Hu Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley and faculty scientist in the Materials Science Division (MSD) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory delivered the December 2023 MIT.nano seminar on scaling of semiconductor lasers.

ABSTRACT
Lasers play a fundamental role in science and technology from quantum computing to communications, manufacturing, defense, sensing, medicine, and imaging. However, scaling the power of lasers has always come at the cost of single mode operation, a scaling question that has been investigated, without success, since the invention of lasers in 1958.

In the first part of the talk, Kanté proposes a solution to this dilemma and discuss a “scale-invariant” laser that remains single-mode irrespective of its cavity size. He will show that the discovered strategy goes beyond the Schawlow-Townes two-mirror strategy that is used by all existing lasers. Kanté will conclude that mirrors are bad for the scaling of lasers.

In the second part of this talk, Kanté discusses their invention of functional topological lasers: integrable non-reciprocal coherent light sources, as well as compact bound state in continuum sources.

BIOGRAPHY
Boubacar Kanté is the Chenming Hu Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) at the University of California, Berkeley and a faculty scientist at the materials science division (MSD) of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). In 2010, he received a Ph.D in engineering/physics from the Université Paris-Saclay. He was assistant professor and then associate professor of electrical and computer engineering (ECE) at the University of California, San Diego from 2013 to 2018. His research interests include wave-matter interaction and nano-optics.

Boubacar Kanté is a 2021 Bakar Fellow and a 2020 Moore Inventor Fellow. He received the 2017 Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Award, the 2016 National Science Foundation (NSF) Career Award, the best undergraduate teacher award from the University of California, San Diego Jacob School of Engineering in 2017, and the 2015 Hellman Fellowship. Kanté also received the Richelieu Prize in Sciences from the Chancellery of Paris Universities for the best Ph.D in France in Engineering, Material Science, Physics, Chemistry, Technology in 2010, the Young Scientist Award from the International Union of Radio Science (URSI) in Chicago in 2007, the fellowship for excellence from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2003 for his undergraduate studies, and a research fellowship from the French Research Ministry for his Ph.D studies.

The MIT.nano Seminar Series takes place monthly during the academic year. It is organized by Farnaz Niroui, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (EECS) at MIT.

See upcoming talks at mitnano.mit.edu/mitnano-seminar-series.