News/Blog

Modern Physics for Engineers and Scientists

This book by David Miller introduces the modern physics of quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics and their applications. Its approach makes it accessible to a wide range of scientists and engineers. Openly available online videos cover the entire material of the text chapters. A digital version of the book, including links to all videos, is… Read more Modern Physics for Engineers and Scientists

Tunneling escape of waves

Quite generally, we find empirically that there are only so many orthogonal waves that can usefully propagate out of some volume or from some object. This is seen in experiments and in numerical analyses. After some number of such waves, the coupling strength falls off drastically, in a somewhat exponential fashion, practically limiting this number… Read more Tunneling escape of waves

David Miller awarded the Frederic Ives Medal by Optica

David Miller has been awarded the Frederic Ives Medal/Jarus W. Quinn Prize by Optica, with the citation “for fundamental scientific and engineering research contributions spanning multiple areas, including optics in digital systems, fundamentals of optics and waves, and complex and controllable photonic circuits” This is the highest award of the society. See the press release at https://www.optica.org/2025IvesMedal.

Separating partially coherent light

Most light we see is partially coherent, but our ability to analyze and manipulate such light has been limited. In particular, though any such light can always be expressed as a sum of mutually incoherent and orthogonal modes – sometimes known as the “natural modes” or the Karhunen-Loève decomposition – we have never been able… Read more Separating partially coherent light

David Miller elected Fellow of AAAS

David Miller has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, with the citation “For fundamental contributions to optoelectronics and nanophotonics with broad applications to communications and information processing” https://www.aaas.org/fellows/2023-fellows

Automatically finding the best optical channels

We can find the best orthogonal and independent channels through any linear optical system using meshes of Mach-Zehnder interferometers at both the “transmitter” and “receiver” ends of the system just by maximizing powers. We simply adjust the phase shifters in interferometers in the 1st row on both sides to maximize the transmitted power from waveguide… Read more Automatically finding the best optical channels

The new multimode optics - self-configuring circuits and fundamental limits for photonic structures

Tutorial talk at ePIXfab 8 workshop, Gent, July 6, 2023 Silicon photonics allows circuits with large numbers of elements that offer many new capabilities, but we need reasonable ways to design and control such complex interferometric circuits. Fortunately, some very convenient architectures, mathematics and algorithms allow simple control, including even self-configuring circuits that can adapt… Read more The new multimode optics - self-configuring circuits and fundamental limits for photonic structures

Understanding and controlling waves – the new multimode optics

“Understanding and controlling waves – the new multimode optics,” Lectures at the Winter College on Optics: Terahertz Optics and Photonics, International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy, February 13, 2023 Talk slides Major references for the talk Waves, modes and communications D. A. B. Miller, “Waves, modes, communications, and optics: a tutorial,” Adv. Opt. Photon.… Read more Understanding and controlling waves – the new multimode optics

Self-configuring photonic circuits and limits in optics

Keynote talk at Photonics West, 2023 – “Self-configuring algorithms, topologies and fundamental limits for photonic circuits and structures” Micro- and nano-fabrication allow new optical systems well beyond previous conventional optics. These possibilities cause us to think of optics quite differently. One approach uses “circuits” with topologies and configuration algorithms. Some such topologies support algorithms allow… Read more Self-configuring photonic circuits and limits in optics

Why optics needs thickness

This Science paper (D. A. B. Miller, “Why optics needs thickness,” Science 379, 41-45 (2023)) shows why and when optical systems need thickness as well as width or area. Understanding this thickness matters as we try to make ever thinner cameras or exploit the emerging possibilities of nanophotonics and flat optics, such as metasurfaces. We… Read more Why optics needs thickness