Abstract:

The first part of the talk is centered around understanding and utilizing high-dimensional light, also known as structured light. I will first present a family of direct tomography protocols that can characterize various types of structured light or high-dimensional photon states. I will introduce some high-performance mode sorters for structured light as well as a series of scan-free direct tomography protocols that can measure high-dimensional spatial modes, spatial vector modes and partially-coherent modes (mixed states). The direct tomography methods directly relate the readouts to the complex-valued description of the photon states to be measured, and can measure the entire photon state in a single experimental setup without any need of scanning. Consequently, direct measurements become critical in enabling real-time metrology of both quantum and classical photon states. I will will present some recent work on robust high-information-capacity optical communication protocols in turbulent environment, including a turbulence-resilient vector beam based communication protocol, a phase conjugation based scheme to enable communication using OAM modes with low crosstalk through a 340m free-space-link, and a vector phase conjugation scheme that can enable 210-spatial-polarization mode communication through 1 km of multi-mode fiber. These breakthroughs can lead to practical carryout of high-dimensional optical communications in realistic environment.  The second part of the talk is to introduce Meta’s vision and efforts to empower people to connect with each other and the world around them. In specific, I will present some collective work from Reality Labs – Research to address one question: “What will we need for future VR’s display?”

Bio:

Zhimin Shi received his Ph.D. degree in Optics from the University of Rochester in 2011. Before that, he received his Bachelor and M.S. degree in Optical Engineering, both with honors, from Zhejiang University in 2001 and 2004, respectively. He was a faculty position at the Department of Physics, The University of South Florida from 2013 to 2020. He then joined Meta Reality Labs – Research and currently is a technical lead manager working on new optical and photonic technologies to enable future AR/VR systems. His research interests include integrated photonics, metamaterials, displays, quantum state metrology, imaging and communication with structured light, slow and fast light, and optical techniques using nonclassical nature of light. Dr. Shi is a senior member of Optica (formerly OSA) , a life member of SPIE, and also currently serves as a topical editor for the Journal of Optical Society of America A.