Paul Barclay

Office: SB 319

Phone: (403) 220-8517 (403) 220-7978 (lab)

Email:

Fax: (403) 210-8876

Address: Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of Calgary
2500 University Drive NW
Calgary, Alberta
Canada T2N 1N4

Department: Department of Physics and Astronomy

Personal Website

Research Interests

My lab studies topics in nanophotonics, quantum optics, and nonlinear optics. Generally, the goal of research in nanophotonics is to create technology to manipulate light within micro- and nanoscale circuits. Nanophotonic circuits are created with many of the same nanoscale fabrication and patterning tools and techniques used to create electronic microchips, and are beginning to play a role in high performance computing and data center architectures at companies like HP, IBM and Intel.

From a more fundamental perspective, nanophotonic devices can create extremely high electromagnetic energy densities at even the single photon level. They accomplish this by concentrating optical energy into nanoscale volumes, and trapping it there for relatively long lengths of time (above a nanosecond, which is a million times longer than a single oscillation at the frequency of light). These enhanced electromagnetic energy densities result in strong interactions between light and the nanophotonic devices, and amplify nominally small optical effects such as nonlinear absorption and optical coupling to mechanical resonances. In the ultimate limit, even for a weak input consisting of only a single photon, these effects can significantly modify the linear response of a nanophotonic device.

Specific projects that utilize these ideas and technology, and that our lab is interested in pursuing are listed below. For updates on our latest work, check our publications.

Nanoscale quantum optics with diamond qubits and photonic devices

Hybrid quantum optomechanics

Quantum sensing

Biography

Paul Barclay completed his Ph.D. in Applied Physics at the California Institute of Technology in 2007. At Caltech he worked for Prof. Oskar Painter to create nanophotonic devices for experiments in nonlinear optics.He also collaborated with Prof. Hideo Mabuchi's quantum control and atomic physics group to study light-matter interaction using chip-based photonic devices and atom traps. He was one of Prof. Painter's first two students. In 2008 he joined Hewlett-Packard Labs, in Palo Alto, California, where he worked with Ray Beausoleil and Charles Santori, in Stan Williams' Information and Quantum Systems Lab. At HP Labs, Paul studied the emerging field of diamond based nanophotonics and quantum optics. Paul's undergraduate degree is in Engineering Physics from the University of British Columbia, where he completed co-op and NSERC undergraduate research terms with Prof. Jeff Young, Prof. Garry Clarke, Nortel Networks, and Ballard Power Systems.

Dr. Barclay has made several significant contributions to the field of nnanophotonics, by designing, fabricating, and measuring new types of nnanoscale optical devices from a wide range of materials. His work is motivated by creating devices which shed light on new areas of physics, in particular the area of quantum information science. Important contributions include the first measurement of nonlinear effects in silicon nanocavities,development of widely adopted fiber probing methods for sub-wavelength photonic devices, and demonstration of some of the first diamond based nanophotonic devices for quantum optics experiments.

Links & Resources

Roles & Positions

Professor