Project acronym FRECOM
Project Nonlinear-Distortion Free Communication over the Optical Fibre Channel
Researcher (PI) Darko ZIBAR
Host Institution (HI) DANMARKS TEKNISKE UNIVERSITET
Country Denmark
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), PE7, ERC-2017-COG
Summary Motivation
The enormous growth in the Internet of Things and server farms for cloud services has increased the strain on the optical communication infrastructure. By 2025, our society will require data rates that are physically impossible to implement using current state-of-the-art optical communication technologies. This is because fibre-optic communication systems are rapidly approaching their fundamental capacity limits imposed by the Kerr nonlinearity of the fibre. Nonlinear distortion limits the ability to transport and detect the information stream. This is a very critical problem for increasing the data rates of any optical fibre communication system.
Proposed research
The only physical quantities not affected by the nonlinearity are eigenvalues, associated with the optical fibre propagation equation. Eigenvalues are thereby ideal candidates for information transport. The concept of eigenvalues is derived under the assumption that the fibre is lossless and that there is no noise in the system which is not strictly correct. Therefore, novel methodologies and concepts for the design of a noise mitigating receiver and a noise robust transmitter are needed to reap the full benefits of optical communication systems employing eigenvalues. This proposal will develop such strategies. This will be achieved by combining, for the first time, the fields of nonlinear optics, optical communication and nonlinear digital signal processing. The results from the project will be verified experimentally, and will form the basis for a new generation of commercial optical communication systems.
Preliminary results
Our proof-of-concept results demonstrate, for the first time, that noise can be handled by employing novel receiver concepts. An order of magnitude improvement compared to the state-of-the-art is demonstrated.
Environment
The research will be carried out in close cooperation with leading groups at Stanford University and Technical University of Munich.
Summary
Motivation
The enormous growth in the Internet of Things and server farms for cloud services has increased the strain on the optical communication infrastructure. By 2025, our society will require data rates that are physically impossible to implement using current state-of-the-art optical communication technologies. This is because fibre-optic communication systems are rapidly approaching their fundamental capacity limits imposed by the Kerr nonlinearity of the fibre. Nonlinear distortion limits the ability to transport and detect the information stream. This is a very critical problem for increasing the data rates of any optical fibre communication system.
Proposed research
The only physical quantities not affected by the nonlinearity are eigenvalues, associated with the optical fibre propagation equation. Eigenvalues are thereby ideal candidates for information transport. The concept of eigenvalues is derived under the assumption that the fibre is lossless and that there is no noise in the system which is not strictly correct. Therefore, novel methodologies and concepts for the design of a noise mitigating receiver and a noise robust transmitter are needed to reap the full benefits of optical communication systems employing eigenvalues. This proposal will develop such strategies. This will be achieved by combining, for the first time, the fields of nonlinear optics, optical communication and nonlinear digital signal processing. The results from the project will be verified experimentally, and will form the basis for a new generation of commercial optical communication systems.
Preliminary results
Our proof-of-concept results demonstrate, for the first time, that noise can be handled by employing novel receiver concepts. An order of magnitude improvement compared to the state-of-the-art is demonstrated.
Environment
The research will be carried out in close cooperation with leading groups at Stanford University and Technical University of Munich.
Max ERC Funding
2 000 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2018-03-01, End date: 2023-08-31
Project acronym PHOENEEX
Project Pyrolytic Hierarchical Organic Electrodes for sustaiNable Electrochemical Energy Systems
Researcher (PI) Stephan Sylvest Keller
Host Institution (HI) DANMARKS TEKNISKE UNIVERSITET
Country Denmark
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), PE7, ERC-2017-COG
Summary The demand for compact energy systems for portable devices such as wearable sensors or mobile phones is increasing. Electrochemical systems are promising candidates for sustainable energy conversion and storage on miniaturised platforms. A recent approach to harvest green energy is biophotovoltaic systems (BPVs), where photosynthetic microorganisms are used to transform light into electrical energy. However, BPVs still provide a relatively low efficiency and are yet unable to deliver the high peak power required for sensor operation or wireless signal transmission in portable systems. In PHOENEEX, I will address these limitations by i) improving the efficiency of BPVs and ii) combining the BPVs with microsupercapacitors (µSCs) which can temporarily store the harvested electrical energy and provide a higher peak power output upon request. More specifically, I will develop highly optimised 3D carbon microelectrodes (3DCMEs) to enhance electron harvesting from cyanobacteria in BPVs and for increased energy density in µSCs. Finally, the improved BPVs and the optimised µSCs will be integrated on the BioCapacitor Microchip - a compact sustainable energy platform for portable systems.
The fabrication of 3DCMEs with highly tailored material properties, large surface area and hierarchical architecture is achieved by pyrolysis of polymer templates in an inert atmosphere. The fundamental hypothesis of PHOENEEX is that the combination of novel precursor materials, new methods for 3D polymer microfabrication and optimised pyrolysis processes will allow for fabrication of 3DCMEs with highly tailored material properties, large surface area and hierarchical architecture impossible to obtain with any other method.
Summary
The demand for compact energy systems for portable devices such as wearable sensors or mobile phones is increasing. Electrochemical systems are promising candidates for sustainable energy conversion and storage on miniaturised platforms. A recent approach to harvest green energy is biophotovoltaic systems (BPVs), where photosynthetic microorganisms are used to transform light into electrical energy. However, BPVs still provide a relatively low efficiency and are yet unable to deliver the high peak power required for sensor operation or wireless signal transmission in portable systems. In PHOENEEX, I will address these limitations by i) improving the efficiency of BPVs and ii) combining the BPVs with microsupercapacitors (µSCs) which can temporarily store the harvested electrical energy and provide a higher peak power output upon request. More specifically, I will develop highly optimised 3D carbon microelectrodes (3DCMEs) to enhance electron harvesting from cyanobacteria in BPVs and for increased energy density in µSCs. Finally, the improved BPVs and the optimised µSCs will be integrated on the BioCapacitor Microchip - a compact sustainable energy platform for portable systems.
The fabrication of 3DCMEs with highly tailored material properties, large surface area and hierarchical architecture is achieved by pyrolysis of polymer templates in an inert atmosphere. The fundamental hypothesis of PHOENEEX is that the combination of novel precursor materials, new methods for 3D polymer microfabrication and optimised pyrolysis processes will allow for fabrication of 3DCMEs with highly tailored material properties, large surface area and hierarchical architecture impossible to obtain with any other method.
Max ERC Funding
2 745 500 €
Duration
Start date: 2018-05-01, End date: 2023-10-31
Project acronym RNA ORIGAMI
Project RNA-protein Nanostructures for Synthetic Biology
Researcher (PI) Ebbe Sloth Andersen
Host Institution (HI) AARHUS UNIVERSITET
Country Denmark
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), LS9, ERC-2015-CoG
Summary Synthetic biology aims at re-engineering organisms for practical applications by designing novel biomolecular components, networks, and pathways. The field is expected to lead to cheaper drugs, sustainable fuel production, efficient diagnosis and targeted therapies for diseases. However, a major obstacle to achieve these goals is our limited ability to rationally design biomolecular structure and function. By contrast, the field of DNA nanotechnology has so far demonstrated an unprecedented ability to design and self-assemble well-defined molecular shapes, although the production method of thermal annealing is not compatible with cells. We have recently demonstrated a breakthrough method, called RNA origami, which allows the design of RNA molecules that fold into well-defined nanoscale shapes during their synthesis by an RNA polymerase. In this proposal I aim at extending this technology to produce RNA-protein nanostructures and at demonstrating their application in synthetic biology. My primary scientific hypothesis is that understanding the folding process during synthesis will help us to design nanostructures that can be produced in cells. I will design a general RNA-protein architecture that is compatible with folding during synthesis. I will investigate folding kinetics to be able to design and program the dynamical folding process. Based on this, RNA-protein nanostructures will be designed, expressed in cells, and verified, for the formation of the desired shapes. We will develop new functionalities by both rational design and selection approaches with the aim of obtaining multivalent-binding and switching properties. Finally, the functional RNA-protein nanostructures will be applied in proof-of-concept experiments to demonstrate efficient, multivalent targeting of subcellular structures, biosensing of a variety of intracellular analytes, metabolic channeling of biosynthesis pathways, and complex control of transcriptional networks.
Summary
Synthetic biology aims at re-engineering organisms for practical applications by designing novel biomolecular components, networks, and pathways. The field is expected to lead to cheaper drugs, sustainable fuel production, efficient diagnosis and targeted therapies for diseases. However, a major obstacle to achieve these goals is our limited ability to rationally design biomolecular structure and function. By contrast, the field of DNA nanotechnology has so far demonstrated an unprecedented ability to design and self-assemble well-defined molecular shapes, although the production method of thermal annealing is not compatible with cells. We have recently demonstrated a breakthrough method, called RNA origami, which allows the design of RNA molecules that fold into well-defined nanoscale shapes during their synthesis by an RNA polymerase. In this proposal I aim at extending this technology to produce RNA-protein nanostructures and at demonstrating their application in synthetic biology. My primary scientific hypothesis is that understanding the folding process during synthesis will help us to design nanostructures that can be produced in cells. I will design a general RNA-protein architecture that is compatible with folding during synthesis. I will investigate folding kinetics to be able to design and program the dynamical folding process. Based on this, RNA-protein nanostructures will be designed, expressed in cells, and verified, for the formation of the desired shapes. We will develop new functionalities by both rational design and selection approaches with the aim of obtaining multivalent-binding and switching properties. Finally, the functional RNA-protein nanostructures will be applied in proof-of-concept experiments to demonstrate efficient, multivalent targeting of subcellular structures, biosensing of a variety of intracellular analytes, metabolic channeling of biosynthesis pathways, and complex control of transcriptional networks.
Max ERC Funding
1 999 935 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-04-01, End date: 2021-03-31
Project acronym UNITY
Project A Single-Photon Source Featuring Unity Efficiency And Unity Indistinguishability For Scalable Optical Quantum Information Processing
Researcher (PI) Niels GREGERSEN
Host Institution (HI) DANMARKS TEKNISKE UNIVERSITET
Country Denmark
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), PE7, ERC-2019-COG
Summary Within optical quantum information processing, the quantum bits are encoded on single photons and their quantum mechanical properties are exploited to build new functionality. A prime example is the quantum computer, which can be built simply from single-photon sources and detectors, and simple optical components. However for scalable optical quantum computing involving hundreds of photons, the performance requirements for the single-photon source are daunting: the source must feature near-unity efficiency and near-unity indistinguishability simultaneously! Today, all known source designs suffer from inherent trade-offs between efficiency and indistinguishability and their performance is insufficient for scalable quantum computing.
The project objective is to realize a source of single indistinguishable photons with performance of ground-breaking nature. The break-through lies in the simultaneous realization of near-unity efficiency and indistinguishability, a combination which overcomes the limitations of present state-of-the-art and ventures far into the regime of scalable quantum computing.
As an expert in single-photon source engineering I find myself in a unique position to address this challenge. Since it is unknown how to design such a source, I will first establish a new understanding of the physics of the near-unity regime, where phonon-induced decoherence represents a main limitation for the indistinguishability. I will then advance state-of-the-art in optical engineering by proposing a novel design, where all physical parameters can be controlled independently. The modelling of the near-unity performance source is extremely demanding, and the analysis requires additional advances within optical simulations and open quantum systems theory. Once this is achieved, I will fabricate a prototype and test it in a multi-photon interference boson sampling experiment to unambiguously prove that scalable optical quantum information processing is indeed within reach.
Summary
Within optical quantum information processing, the quantum bits are encoded on single photons and their quantum mechanical properties are exploited to build new functionality. A prime example is the quantum computer, which can be built simply from single-photon sources and detectors, and simple optical components. However for scalable optical quantum computing involving hundreds of photons, the performance requirements for the single-photon source are daunting: the source must feature near-unity efficiency and near-unity indistinguishability simultaneously! Today, all known source designs suffer from inherent trade-offs between efficiency and indistinguishability and their performance is insufficient for scalable quantum computing.
The project objective is to realize a source of single indistinguishable photons with performance of ground-breaking nature. The break-through lies in the simultaneous realization of near-unity efficiency and indistinguishability, a combination which overcomes the limitations of present state-of-the-art and ventures far into the regime of scalable quantum computing.
As an expert in single-photon source engineering I find myself in a unique position to address this challenge. Since it is unknown how to design such a source, I will first establish a new understanding of the physics of the near-unity regime, where phonon-induced decoherence represents a main limitation for the indistinguishability. I will then advance state-of-the-art in optical engineering by proposing a novel design, where all physical parameters can be controlled independently. The modelling of the near-unity performance source is extremely demanding, and the analysis requires additional advances within optical simulations and open quantum systems theory. Once this is achieved, I will fabricate a prototype and test it in a multi-photon interference boson sampling experiment to unambiguously prove that scalable optical quantum information processing is indeed within reach.
Max ERC Funding
2 119 637 €
Duration
Start date: 2020-09-01, End date: 2025-08-31
