Alessandro Pitanti

Biography

Pitanti 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 my PhD, under the supervision of prof. Lorenzo Pavesi, I started to focus on experimental Si photonics, focusing in particular on silicon nanocrystals as active material in different cavity systems. In my 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 I developed efficient, room-temperature detectors based on semiconductor nanowires and smart photonic structure from light extraction and control in Quantum Cascade Lasers. Joining my new and past expertises on photonics and charge transport, I won a Marie Curie fellowship with the aim of devising opto-electro-mechanical systems under the supervision of prof. Oskar Painter at California Institute of Technology. After going back to NEST as a staff researcher I am currently starting new research lines, where NEST strong activities in THz photonics, superconductors and graphene are merged with mechanics to create new concepts for optomechanical devices.

Research Interest

Pitanti research interests focus on the control of nanomechanical objects through their interaction with electromagnetic fields. In particular, I am 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.