2019 Medal Winners | francais

The 2019 CAP Herzberg Medal

is awarded to

Paul Barclay

"It is a tremendous honour to be recognized by the Canadian physics community with this award. Since my undergraduate studies I have been fortunate to work with supportive colleagues and mentors, and more recently with extremely talented graduate students and postdocs, without whom our work in nanophotonics would not have been possible." winner citation

The Canadian Association of Physicists (CAP) is pleased to announce that the 2019 CAP Herzberg Medal is awarded to Paul Barclay, University of Calgary, for his demonstrated leadership in nanophotonics and optomechanical devices that is building new bridges between pure and applied quantum science. announcement

Prof. Paul Barclay is a physicist harnessing the quantum behaviour of photonic technology that manipulates light on-chip "nanophotonic devices" for experiments and applications in computing, communications, and sensing. Using nanophotonic devices that he designed, fabricated and studied, Prof. Barclay has made many influential discoveries of new quantum and nonlinear optical effects.

Most recently, he led the development of photonic optomechanical devices created from diamond. These devices simultaneously couple light to the motion of mesoscopic mechanical resonators and to diamond electron spin qubits, providing a pathway for connecting quantum networking and computing technologies. Realizing these devices involved invention of a diamond nanofabrication technique that is being rapidly adopted by other researchers. These devices, and others that he invented based on silicon photonics technology, also enable exquisite measurement and control of mechanical motion at the nanoscale, leading to his discovery, together with collaborators, of new magnetic phenomena via optomechanical torque magnetometry.

Dr. Barclay also pioneered diamond quantum nanophotonic technology that lead to the first observation of Purcell enhanced emission from a single diamond quantum emitter. This is a key requirement for realizing practical quantum networks based on diamond spin qubits. Prior to this work, he created one of the first two high quality factor photonic crystal cavities, and discovered and explained the crucial role of nonlinear optical processes in the operation of silicon photonics technology that is becoming increasingly important for today's computing and communication systems. nominator citation

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