Category: Random Lasers

(Nature) Photonics and the Nobel Prize in Physics 2021

News and Views on Nature Photonics by Claudio Conti and Eugenio Del Re

Our Replica Symmetry Breaking experiments in the motivations of the Nobel Prize to Giorgio Parisi !!!

The main goal of the Light and Complexity project (ERC StG 2007) was to observe replica symmetry breaking (a process predicted by Giorgio Parisi) in random lasers and nonlinear waves.

After our successful experiments in 2015 and 2017, the results are now cited in the motivations of the 2021 Nobel Prize to Giorgio Parisi !

https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2021/10/sciback_fy_en_21.pdf

Flexible Organometal Random Lasers

Disorder is emerging as a strategy for fabricating random laser sources with very promising materials, like perovskites, for which standard laser cavities are not effective, or too expensive. We need however different fabrication protocols and technologies for reducing the laser threshold and controlling its emission. Here we demonstrate an effectively solvent-engineered method for high-quality perovskite thin films on the flexible polyimide substrate. The fractal perovskite thin films exhibit excellent optical properties at room temperature and easily achieve lasing action without any laser cavity above room temperature with a low pumping threshold. The lasing action is also observed in curved perovskite thin films on the flexible substrates. The lasing threshold can be further reduced by increasing the local curvature, which modifies the scattering strengths of the bent thin film. We also show that the curved perovskite lasers are extremely robust with respect to repeated deformations. Because of the low spatial coherence, these curved random laser devices are efficient and durable speckle-free light sources for applications in spectroscopy, bio-imaging, and illumination.

Wang et al. in ACS Nano (2019)

Graphene oxide photonics

The successful exfoliation of graphite initiated new science in any research field and is employing a huge number of scientists in the world investigating chemical, structural, mechanical and optoelectrical; properties of the atomic-thick sheets of graphene and graphene oxide. Similarly to other carbon-based materials, graphene family have shown exceptional optical responses; and nowadays it is engineered to produce efficient photonic components. In this review we aim to summarize the main results in nonlinear optical response and fluorescence of graphene oxide; moreover, its laser printing is reviewed as a novel promising lithographic technique.

Neda Ghofraniha and Claudio Conti in Journal of Optics

Biomimetic graphene oxide devices

Deep learning, living, random, optical, and – maybe – useful

In a recent paper, we demonstrated an optical deep neural network with a real living piece of brain tumor (a 3D “tumour model”). We think this is the first example of a hybrid living/photonic hardware: a sort of artificially intelligent device performing optical functions and detecting tumour morphodynamics (including the effect of chemotherapy)

Deep optical neural network by living tumour brain cells

Abstract: The new era of artificial intelligence demands large-scale ultrafast hardware for machine learning. Optical artificial neural networks process classical and quantum information at the speed of light,
and are compatible with silicon technology, but lack scalability and need expensive manufacturing of many computational layers. New paradigms, as reservoir computing and the extreme learning machine, suggest that disordered and biological materials may realize artificial neural networks with thousands of computational nodes trained only at the input and at the readout. Here we employ biological complex systems, i.e., living three-dimensional tumour brain models, and demonstrate a random neural network (RNN) trained to detect tumour morphodynamics via
image transmission. The RNN, with the tumour spheroid 19 as a three-dimensional deep computational reservoir, performs programmed optical functions and detects cancer morphodynamics from laser-induced hyperthermia inaccessible by optical imaging. Moreover, the RNN quantifies the effect of chemotherapy inhibiting tumour growth. We realize a non-invasive smart probe for cytotoxicity assay, which is at least one order of magnitude more sensitive with respect to conventional imaging. Our random and hybrid photonic/living system is a novel artificial machine for computing and for the real-time investigation of tumour dynamics.

Authors: D. Pierangeli, V. Palmieri, G. Marcucci, C. Moriconi, G. Perini, M. De Spirito, M. Papi, C. Conti

https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.09311