Optical Networks for Controlling Quantum Communication Systems

HRL Laboratories
2014–15

The Harvey Mudd clinic team sponsored by HRL Laboratories has been tasked with designing, evaluating, and modeling optical networks to generate sequences of ultrafast optical pulses on a time scale of 300 to 3000 nanoseconds. The Final Report summarizes the team‘s conceptual design process, presents several design alternatives, and describes the completed simulation and modeling work. Based on the flexibility in pulse arrival times which the designs must accommodate, the team has created designs which are suitable for different ranges of experimental parameters. The specific experimental advantages and disadvantages of each design are modeled. The team also wrote extensive MATLAB and Simulink modeling tools that are usable for optics experiments well beyond this clinic project.

Advisor(s): Theresa W. Lynn and Qimin Yang.

Team: Nithya Menon ’16, Paul Charles Jerger ’15, Alexander Kendrick ’15, and Luke St. Marie ’15.