4 PhD/Postdoctoral positions in Nano & Quantum Optics 2026

Photonic metasurfaces integrated into nematic liquid crystal (LC) cells have been established as a viable route to actively control the properties of incident light fields. However, most structures realized so far are based on simple, spatially homogeneous metasurface designs, thereby strongly limiting the accessible functionalities. Building on the existing experience of LC integrated functional metasurfaces in my group, this doctoral project targets the experimental demonstration of active tuning of complex wavefront-shaping functionalities by establishing LC tunability for inversely designed spatially variant designs. For the inverse design aspects, this experimental project involves close collaboration with theoretically oriented researchers.

We invite applications for a PhD and/or postdoctoral position within a project focusing on the development of integrated quantum photonic sources based on monolithic nonlinear barium titanate (BaTiO₃) waveguides on insulator (BTOI). The goal is to realize compact, scalable, and configurable on-chip sources of polarization-entangled photon pairs (Bell states), replacing complex bulk optical systems with integrated platforms.

The project exploits the unique nonlinear tensor properties and ferroelectric domain engineering of BaTiO₃ to enable direct generation of polarization-entangled photons within a single waveguide. This approach opens a novel pathway toward monolithic quantum light sources and provides a platform for exploring on-chip quantum state engineering via tailored ferroelectric domain configurations.

The successful candidate will work at the interface of solid-state physics, materials science, and integrated nonlinear and quantum photonics, contributing to both device development and fundamental research. The project is embedded in a dynamic research environment at the Abbe Center of Photonics (ACP), with access to advanced nanofabrication, optical characterization, and quantum photonics infrastructure.

The rapidly increasing demand for artificial intelligence (AI) models has exposed fundamental limitations in conventional digital information-processing hardware, prompting a paradigm shift in hardware design. Traditional computing architectures were based on general-purpose processing, in which a single central processing unit handled all computational tasks. In contrast, modern systems increasingly rely on specialized hardware, which are tailored to specific mathematical operations and significantly accelerate AI workloads. At the same time, entirely new analog computing approaches have emerged as an important research direction.

Among these new approaches to AI hardware, diffractive photonic networks are extremely promising since light as information carrier possesses fundamental advantages over electronic systems. These advantages include an extremely large bandwidth that enables ultrafast processing, high degrees of parallelization in diffractive systems, as well as low propagation losses that reduce power consumption and mitigate heat-related performance limits. Owing to these intrinsic properties, optical computing hardware holds the potential to achieve unprecedented levels of performance combined with a drastic reduction of energy consumption and minimal latency.

While major progress has been achieved in diffractive photonic networks in the last years, the scalability of the approach will depend critically on the availability of nonlinear photonic activation functions. Thus, we are seeking to hire a PhD student and a postdoctoral researcher to work on concepts for the realization of highly multimode nonlinear devices, which will allow the ultrafast processing of massively parallelized streams of information. The PhD project or postdoctoral qualification field can be shaped to the preferences of the candidates, but should incorporate the encoding of broad-bandwidth data streams onto complexly shaped light distributions by spatial light modulators, the realization of diffractive photonic elements based on metasurface, the nonlinear interaction of the diffracted light fields in different nonlinear material platforms available in the laboratory for Nano & Quantum Optics, as well as the training of the resulting nonlinear nanophotonic systems for benchmark classification tasks.

The project will offer the possibility for the candidates to achieve qualification in a modern field of photonics, connected to highly relevant applications. Thus, besides the fundamental scientific challenges there will also be opportunities to engage with industry partners on the subject. The work will be embedded in a team effort at the laboratory for Nano & Quantum Optics.

The newly established NanoPico Photonic Computing Group, funded by the BMFTR project PicPhotMat–Engineered materials for picophotonic analog computing, follows an innovative approach of utilizing the interaction between structured light and engineered materials for optical computation, with the goal of overcoming current constraints in integration density, computational throughput, and energy efficiency. Contributing to frontier research in picophotonics, the group investigates how to enable ultra-high-density analog optical processing, fundamentally new light-matter interactions, and chip-scale architectures that may serve as the basis for next-generation AI accelerators and neuromorphic hardware. Central to this vision is the development of engineered metamaterials capable of processing information through light-matter interactions that occur at extremely small length scales, far below the capabilities of conventional photonic circuits.

Within this research context, the objective of this postdoctoral project is to lead the subproject on novel metamaterials that enable near-to-far-field information transfer, including the design, fabrication, and optical characterization. These structures will form a foundational building block of the group’s picophotonic computing architecture by enabling the readout, transformation, and routing of optical information with a spatial precision unattainable in conventional optics. Moreover, the task of the successful candidate will include the implementation and coordination of scientific projects in the field of photonic computing, the supervision of Master and PhD student projects and the representation of the group at international conferences. We offer a highly interdisciplinary and collaborative research environment with excellent opportunities to develop an independent scientific profile in photonic computing, build a strong network through collaborations within the Abbe Centre of Photonics, and publish in high-impact journals.