Attosecond-level synchronization of optoelectronics

Forskningsprojekt, 2024 – 2027

Modern communication systems rely on the ability of electronics to generate and process signals at terabit per second. The disaggregation of computing resources has heralded a “more than Moore” era, whereby a conducive scaling in computing strongly relies on the ability to interconnect multiple chip modules with minimum latency and energy consumption. However, state-of-the-art electronics rely on clock signals derived from pure electronic oscillators, which have fundamental limitations in timing jitter, bandwidth and power consumption. Advances in photonic integration and chip-scale frequency combs now offer the potential to generate ultra-pure quantum-limited clocks derived from optical references. This project will investigate the generation of pure microwave signals and sub-fs timing jitter microcombs for the synchronization of electronics. This project builds upon a new partnership between the ultrafast photonics research group at Chalmers University of Technology (SE) and the Ultrascale photonic control and measurement group at KAIST (KR). These groups bring a synergetic effort in their ability to realize world-class microcombs based on ultralow-loss silicon nitride and experimental methods to measure timing jitter with sub-fs precision. If successful, this project will provide a basis for the realization of scalable computing architectures in future hyperscale datacenters by the realization of portable, integrated time-frequency references at ultrahigh frequencies