I got the Bachelor degree in Physics in 2013 and the Master degree in Physics in 2015, both at the University of Trento, Italy. Subsequently, I pursued the PhD in Physics at the same institution, with focus on nonlinear, classical and quantum silicon photonics. I mainly worked on intermodal four wave mixing in silicon, integrated devices for mode coupling and integrated heralded single photon sources. I got the PhD degree in 2019, with a thesis entitled “Intermodal four wave mixing for heralded single photon sources in silicon”. From 2019 to 2021 I have been a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Trento, working on ultra-pure heralded single photon sources, heralded sources of mid infrared single photons in silicon, entangled photons sources in silicon and quantum ghost spectroscopy. From November 2021 I joined the Optoelectronics group in ICFO within the PROBIST program.

My current research interests cover quantum integrated photonics for applied sensing technologies.

On-chip photonic gas sensing via undetected photon quantum spectroscopy

The aim of the project is to demonstrate a new on-chip quantum platform for gas sensing. Its selectivity, small footprint and low cost makes it a potential solution for air quality mapping of large areas with high resolution, this being essential to address the significant percentage (11.6%) of deaths attributed to pollution.

Usually, absorption spectroscopy is performed in the mid infrared (MIR), where molecules exhibit unique and strong vibrational absorption bands.

However, due to the lack of compact, low cost and efficient light sources and detectors in this spectral range, MIR spectroscopy is still an expensive and unfeasible solution, especially in terms of commercialization and portability.

These limitations can be overcome by means of integrated quantum photonics. Integrated photonics enables miniaturized and cheap devices, compatible with current electronics and smart devices. Quantum photonics allows to exploit the quantum properties of light to perform new measurements otherwise not possible with classical solutions. In particular, we will investigate undetected photon spectroscopy on a photonic integrated platform. Thanks to this quantum measurement, we will perform MIR absorption spectroscopy without the need of MIR sources and detectors, and by using only efficient and miniaturizable telecom lasers and visible detectors.

In the project we will investigate novel integrated sources of entangled photon pairs and new schemes for undetected photon measurements.

We will also investigate the application of such sources and quantum measurements not only in sensing but also in quantum communication applications.