Mordechai (Moti) Segev

The Robert J. Shillman Distinguished Professor Faculty of Physics and Faculty of Electrical Engineering Solid State Institute Technion

Welcome

The research of my group has always been experimental and theoretical projects, within the general area of photonics / lasers / quantum electronics. We are interested in two types of projects: exploring fundamental aspects, with impact on other areas of science (beyond photonics), and profound applications – that can have a real impact on technology.

Our current topics of research are:

  1. Topological photonics (photonic topological insulators, topological insulator lasers, artificial gauge fields in photonics, etc.)
  2. Light and disorder (Anderson localization of light, hyper-transport, localization by deep-subwavelength disorder, etc.)
  3. Structure-based subwavelength imaging, and super-resolution in space, time, frequency and in quantum systems. (with my colleagues Prof. Oren Cohen and Prof. Yonina Eldar)
  4. Curved space photonics and photonic devices inspired by General Relativity concepts.
  5. Complex nonlinear optofluidics
  6. Nanophotonics

Each of these topics has multiple projects, where the students and postdocs do both theory and experiments. The topics are quite dynamics, and vary with time – following new ideas that naturally come up while carrying out research.

The figure shows the observation of photonic topological protection in an array of waveguides arranged in a honeycomb lattice with an equilateral triangle shape. (a) Schematic diagram of the helical waveguides; the neighbor distance is 15 microns and the helix radius is 8 microns. A waveguide is ‘removed’ from the edge, and acts as a defect in the structure. (b) Microscope image of the input facet of the array, with missing waveguide; yellow circle indicates the waveguide in which light is injected. (c) Injected light moves clockwise around the array; avoids the defect and all backscattering is suppressed due to topological protection.
The figure shows the observation of photonic topological protection in an array of waveguides arranged in a honeycomb lattice with an equilateral triangle shape. (a) Schematic diagram of the helical waveguides; the neighbor distance is 15 microns and the helix radius is 8 microns. A waveguide is ‘removed’ from the edge, and acts as a defect in the structure. (b) Microscope image of the input facet of the array, with missing waveguide; yellow circle indicates the waveguide in which light is injected. (c) Injected light moves clockwise around the array; avoids the defect and all backscattering is suppressed due to topological protection.