Boston Chapter of the IEEE Photonics Society

Abstract:  The field of integrated photonics has progressed rapidly in recent years, spurred primarily by applications in the communications industry.  The promise of the technology stems from the increased functionality and dramatically reduced size, weight, power, and cost (SWAP-C) which can be realized when batch fabricating a multitude of optoelectronic components in a single monolithic process.  These advances can be leveraged in many other fields which currently rely on discrete optoelectronic components.  In this talk, I will describe efforts at MIT Lincoln Laboratory to incorporate integrated photonic devices to improve the performance and reduce the SWAP-C of inertial sensing systems.  In one effort, we seek to develop photonic integrated circuits on an InP platform to improve the relative intensity noise and wavelength stability of optical sources used in fiber optic gyroscopes.  In a second endeavor, we describe a novel accelerometer concept which combines silicon photonic integrated circuits with traditional MEMS-based accelerometer devices.  Monolithic integration of silicon photonics and MEMS structures could usher in an entirely new class of inertial sensors which dramatically improve upon the current state of the art.  We describe the performance improvements which can be gained from these new type of devices and report on current progress towards realization of an initial prototype.

Biography:  Suraj Bramhavar is a Member of the Technical Staff in the Quantum Information and Integrated Nanosystems Group at MIT Lincoln Laboratory.  He received his B.S. degree (2006), his M.S. degree (2008), and his Ph.D. degree (2012) all in Electrical Engineering from Boston University where he studied novel nanoscale optomechanical sensing systems.  While working towards his Ph.D., he demonstrated a variety of sensing platforms for nanoscale mechanical resonators using tapered optical fibers and integrated silicon photonic waveguides.  From 2011-2014, he was a Researcher in the Photonics Technology Laboratory at Intel Corporation where he helped develop a silicon photonic platform for high speed data communications systems.  His current research interests include advancing the state-of-the-art in photonic integration with specific emphasis on inertial sensing applications.