Alessandro Pitanti

Biography

He graduated from University in Pisa in 2006, defending a thesis on the theoretical optical properties of Si/Ge multi-quantum-wells analyzed with the tight-binding technique. Moving to University of Trento for his PhD, under the supervision of prof. Lorenzo Pavesi, he started to focus on experimental Si photonics, focusing in particular on silicon nanocrystals as active material in different cavity systems. In his first post-doc at NEST – Scuola Normale Superiore and CNR-Nano, in Alessandro Tredicucci group, he moved from the Near-Infrared to the THz spectral range, where he developed efficient, room-temperature detectors based on semiconductor nanowires and smart photonic structure from light extraction and control in Quantum Cascade Lasers.

Research Interest

His research interests focus on the control of nanomechanical objects through their interaction with electromagnetic fields. In particular, He is interested in devising active devices such as Quantum Cascade Lasers with actuable components and study the interaction of the light nonlinearities with real - although small- mechanical harmonic oscillators. In a regime where the mechanics thermal occupation can be cooled close to the ground state (1 phonon), quantum mechanical effects start to arise even in these macroscopic systems which are composed by billion of atoms. This makes these devices appealing for real world quantum applications such as quantum repeaters andquantum state translators.