Illinois ECE Assistant Professor Kejie Fang recently won an NSF CAREER award for his proposal on cavity-less optomechanics with macroscopic resonances. This prestigious award is given in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.
The goal of his program is to demonstrate a new on-chip optomechanical architecture for macroscopic quantum optomechanics and Floquet light guiding by taking advantage of mechanical bound states in the continuum (BICs).
“Interrogating mechanical oscillators using light brings new quantum technology,” Fang said, “however, conventional quantum mechanical oscillators based on suspended structures suffer from insufficient thermalization and excess noise when they are probed by light at low temperature, representing a severe roadblock.”