Welcome to the Institute of Photonics and Quantum Electronics (IPQ)

September 2019: Tobias Harter and Christoph Füllner, PhD candidates at the IPQ, won the Runner Up Prize in the BestStudent Paper Competition during the European Conference on Optical Communication (ECOC2019) for their paper "Generalized Kramers-Kronig Receiver for 16QAM Wireless THz Transmission at 110 Gbit/s". Their work demonstrates a greatly simplified coherent THz receiver, which can be used for high-speed wireless communications.

August 2019: Scientists at IPQ/IMT in collaboration with Fraunhofer institutes have shown a wireless THz transmission link that exploits optoelectronic processing both for signal generation at the transmitter and for coherent detection at the receiver. Using a high-speed photoconductor and a photonic local oscillator for optoelectronic down-conversion, the team has demonstrated wireless transmission at up to 30 Gbit/s over more than 50 m as well as wideband tunability of the carrier frequency between 0.03 THz and 0.34 THz. The paper appeared in the current issue of Optica.

Original publication: Optica

KIT press release: German

July 2019: Researchers of IPQ, IMT, and IHE in collaboration with scientists from the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics (IAF) in Freiburg have demonstrated direct conversion of high-speed data signals from the terahertz (THz) domain to the optical domain using an ultra-broadband modulator. The device combines a plasmonic nanostructure with a highly efficient organic electro-optic material, offers a modulation bandwidth of more than 0.3 THz, and lends itself to high-density integration together with advanced silicon photonic circuitry. The concept of direct conversion of wireless THz data signals to optical signals offers unprecedented flexibility for integration of future THz wireless links into existing fiber-optic infrastructures.

Original publication: Nature Photonics

KIT press release: English, German

Media response: Nature Photonics

July 2018: The IPQ/IMT project team "DELPHI - 3D Laser Lithography for Photonic Integration" will receive the Second Prize of the renowned Berthold-Leibinger Innovation Prize. The DELPHI project group, headed by Christian Koos, was dedicated to industrial adoption of femtosecond laser lithography as a tool for 3D additive nanofabrication in integrated photonics and has led to foundation of the start-up company Vanguard Photonics GmbH. The project builds upon multi-photon lithography for fabrication of single-mode photonic waveguides and free-form micro-optical elements for efficient coupling of optical microchips. The award ceremony will take place on September 21, 2018 in Ditzingen, Germany.