This award will support Mr. Drew Maywar, a Ph.D. student under Professor Govind Agrawal, University of Rochester, to conduct dissertation research in collaboration with Professor Yoshiaki Nakano at the University of Tokyo in Japan. Mr. Maywar will spend 12 months working in Japan on optical memory elements for use in photonic packet switching circuitry. The student's dissertation research to date has focused on numerical modeling. The proposed fabrication and experiment are intended to demonstrate a one-directional, 10-GHz optical buffer driven by submilliwatt holding beams.
The tremendous increase in the capacity and performance of communication networks resulting from the use of optical transmission lines is expected to be matched by a similar evolution of network-node technologies. Work on this project will be towards that end. The project enables collaboration between complementary laboratories in the United States and Japan and provides international research experience for an American graduate student. ***
