Edoardo Vicentini, Winner of the 2023 Bernard J. Couillaud Prize

A tantalizing look at how today’s research will enable tomorrow’s applications

Coherent:
Edoardo, first of all, how did you learn about the Bernard Couillaud prize? 

Edoardo:
So, I know very well Chiara Trovatello, which was last year’s winner of the Couillaud prize. After seeing her as a winner last year, I went to check on the Optica Foundation webpage, I saw the requirements and I thought “okay, I can also apply. I have my card to play” and luckily, I'm here as a winner this year. 

Coherent:
Combs are becoming more common in Optics and people use them for spectroscopy, used for absolute frequency measurements, but I think it's the first time I’ve heard about comb use for Imaging (tomographic Imaging or three-dimensional Imaging). Can you tell us something more about this application and what you think about that? 

Edoardo:
For the people that are not completely familiar with the frequency comb, you can think of a frequency comb as many continuous wave lasers that have a very fixed and controlled frequency spacing. With this laser source, we are doing imaging, three-dimensional imaging, and tomography. To achieve these results, we record the interference between two frequency combs on a camera and not anymore on a single detector. This allows us to have a two-dimensional plane where the interference is recorded. First, we can have imaging. Additionally, since we have the interference in all the space, we have the possibility to reconstruct the wavefront of this wave that was interacting with the target, and with this information we can also have the access to the third dimension, the distance. And here is where frequency combs are coming as a novelty in three-dimensional imaging because this distance can be measured without ambiguity over very long range, but still with the precision of a fraction of the wavelength of the laser.

Coherent:
Okay, very good. This helps us to put this in perspective. The other question I would like to ask you is when people use combs for spectroscopy they need a certain wavelength, maybe broad if they want to do wideband spectroscopy or focus on the application. For your specific application, do you need to use a certain frequency range, or do you have total freedom?

Edoardo: 
I think it's good to distinguish two different cases. In one case, we are just interested in the imaging itself. Here, we are just interested in a wavelength where the target is transparent, if we want to see through, or, if we want to see it in a reflection, that can reflect. In the other case, we can join the three-dimensional imaging, with spectroscopy. Now, we need a frequency comb that spans a spectral region where there are interesting features of the material to be analyzed.

Coherent:
Okay. I understand that, very good. Now if you were to bet on the first application, or the first area of application, for your technology, what would be your pick? 

Edoardo:
My pick is going to be a biological application because, especially in experiments where you merge the imaging and the spectroscopy, you can have a community of people that can be interested to pay an extra cost to have a more complex imaging system in exchange to have all the information together in a single experiment.

Coherent:
Okay, so in the area of biological imaging, great. Now, do you see at this moment a technical bottleneck, in terms of difficulty or in terms of cost, to make this type of technology accessible to more and more people?

Edoardo:
We are working with the frequency comb sources that are available in the market and we are not developing a particular laser source for this application. In this sense we are limited by what the market can offer. And once frequency combs and, in particular, dual-comb systems are becoming more accessible for a broader market, then our application can become available for more people.

Coherent:
Okay, thank you, Edoardo. So, do you see your future being in a potential startup or do you prefer to remain in the environment of academic research, maybe moving to new fields? 

Edoardo:
I'm open to every opportunity because I really like to change what I'm working on. For example, I just shifted my research on a different topic, from precision spectroscopy with frequency combs to nanooptics. Seeing that I’m liking this change, I think that in the future another kind of change, with a completely different type of work could be a possibility for me. And, of course, starting my own startup with the colleagues and the people that I'm working with could be a possibility. I'm not saying no now.

Coherent:
Okay, great. Last question. Can you give us an idea of how you're planning to spend the prize money?

Edoardo:
I would like to use the prize money to get a first level of independency. Since this research project is made in collaboration with people at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Germany, during the next year I will go back and forth quite often. So, I wanted to start to get this kind of independency for the trips. Related to the equipment, a limiting factor for the project development is computing power. The broad bandwidth frequency combs and the high-resolution camera are generating a huge amount of data that we have to analyze. The raw data have dimension of the order of gigabytes that we need to open and process. Having a dedicated machine to do this kind of operation will speed up a lot my work.

Coherent:
Okay, very good. Thank you.  Congratulations again for winning the prize. It was a great pleasure to speak to you and to learn more about your research.

Edoardo:
It was a pleasure to meet you, to be here at Coherent, and thank you again.

Coherent:
We would like to thank everybody for reading and to remind readers that, if you are an early career investigator or if you know any early career investigators in the field of ultrafast photonics or lasers, the Couillaud Prize is annual and the application period usually opens in the month of December, so please consider applying for the 2024 Couillaud Prize. Thank you very much for reading.

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