CSU Physics Colloquium

Crystals, Polymers, Lithography...Oh my! - Towards Integrating Optical Systems onto a Single Chip

Martha-Elizabeth Baylor

University of Colorado at Boulder

Mon,  8/24

The cocktail party problem describes the human ability to separate one voice from a mixture of voices. Solving the cocktail party problem, or more specifically performing blind source separation, is very important to signal processing applications such as distinguishing astronomical sources, identifying bio-rhythms in MEG data, and eavesdropping on telecommunication signals. I will describe an optoelectronic feedback loop whose dynamics solve the cocktail party problem under certain conditions. This optical system is capable of separating signals with bandwidths two orders of magnitude greater than what has been achieved by algorithmic approaches. I will present real-time audio and radio frequency data from this system. Unfortunately, this optical processor is physically too big to be used in real-world applications. I will discuss how photolithography techniques in photopolymers could one day enable the miniaturization of optical systems to more practical chip scales.