Deep ultraviolet (DUV) lasers, known for their high photon energy and short wavelengths, are essential in various fields such as semiconductor lithography, high-resolution spectroscopy, precision material processing, and quantum technology. These lasers offer increased coherence and reduced power consumption compared to excimer or gas discharge lasers, enabling the development of more compact systems.

Quantum information processing is a field that relies on the entanglement of multiple photons to process vast amounts of information. However, creating multiphoton entanglement is a challenging task. Traditional methods either use quantum nonlinear optical processes, which are inefficient for large numbers of photons, or linear beam-splitting and quantum interference, which require complex setups prone to issues like loss and crosstalk.

Traditional imaging systems are bidirectional—if I can see you, you can also see me. Researchers at UCLA recently developed a new type of imaging technology that could revolutionize how we capture and process visual information: unidirectional imaging. By allowing images to be formed in only one direction, this technology provides an efficient and compact method for asymmetric visual information processing and communication.

Photonics provides AI not only  with the tools to sense and  communicate more effectively,  but also with the instruments  to accelerate the inference  speed. Moreover, AI offers  photonics the intelligence  to process, analyze and  interpret the sensed data,  but also to solve a wide  class of inverse problems  in photonics design,  imaging and wavefront  reconstruction in ways  not possible before.