ALPS2019 Tsunaya Tanaka

2019-01-16 2022-09-24 miyahara

Research

ALPS2019 Participation Report

Tanabe Laboratory, 1st year master's student, Tsunaya Tanaka

We are writing to inform you of the following matter.

record

Participating Conferences

Conference: The 8th Advanced Laser and Photon Sources (ALPS2019)
Dates: April 22-25, 2019
Venue: Pacifico Yokohama (Conference center, Exhibition hall), Yokohama, Japan

About ALPS 2019

ALPS is an international conference organized by the Laser Society of Japan and belongs to the OPTICS & PHOTONICS International Congress (OPIC), which is held annually. OPIC is the only international congress related to optics in Japan, and the timing of the congress provides a valuable opportunity for those who have no experience in international congresses such as the presenter to gain experience at the beginning. The location of the conference is also conveniently accessible from our laboratory. In the poster session area, there is also a very large exhibition organized by industries, and many companies set up booths to introduce their products and advanced technologies. Since the presenter of this report was a poster presenter at this conference, he was able to visit the exhibition well before the presentations started. There were very few presentations on optical frequency comb applications, let alone microcomputers. It was surprising that there were few presentations of research results on optical frequency comb applications, even though there were advanced groups such as the Minoshima Laboratory of the University of Electro-Communications.

3. Presentation by the presenter

A poster presentation was given on the changes in Q-values and dispersion of magnesium fluoride crystal resonators fabricated by precision machining before and after polishing. I had already experienced the presentation format at the Spring Meeting of Japan Society of Applied Physics, but I had a hard time because the presentation was given in English. I focused on conveying the contents of the presentation and the audience seemed to be able to understand most of my presentation. The most frequently asked question was "To what extent are you aiming to improve the Q-value toward solitonization? This made me keenly aware of the necessity of estimating specific numerical targets, rather than simply showing that Q-values have improved. Finally, one of the audience members advised us to apply chemical surface treatment using annealing or high-power lasers, since hand polishing alone may eventually reach its limits in terms of accuracy and reproducibility. In fact, there are previous studies that have improved the Q-value by several times by making full use of such techniques, and it would be important to consider more advanced processing methods in addition to hand polishing by referring to them. The audience included Dr. Kannari, Dr. Minoshima, Mr. Nakajima of the Minoshima Laboratory, and the award judges. In particular, the opportunity to have close discussions with Dr. Minoshima was a great source of food for us. In addition, thanks to the help of many people, we received the student award at this conference, which was a great motivation for the presenter in his future research activities.

4. other presentations attended

ALPS-7-01 Miniature chip-based frequency combs: physics and applications

Invited talk by Prof. Kerry J. Vahala of California Institute of Technology (Caltech), reviewing the principles and applications of soliton microcomputers. The contents of the lecture were similar to those of the symposium held by our laboratory at the end of last year. He explained the process from an overview of micro optical resonators to microcomb generation and soliton formation. In the slide introducing the application of microcomb synthesizers, a figure from a paper reported this year was added.

ALPS-P2-24 Tailored generation of a highly-discrete Raman type comb

Poster presented by Minoshima Lab. The presentation was about the Raman effect in hydrogen gas filled in a huge container, in which a chain of Raman effects is generated to form a comb-like spectrum and a part of the spectrum is picked up to convert the pump light to various frequencies. This was an interesting study because the process of cascade of nonlinear optical effects was similar to that of microcomb. However, the footprint of the experimental system is too large to be of particular relevance for engineering applications.