• About Us

Mitigating dissipation & Saving energy

Since the late 1980s, energy consumption from the modern electronics industry has increased drastically. Even worse, most of the consumed energy from these devices is wasted, dissipated or lost in the transport of charge or electricity throughout electronic circuits. Knowing that our information-based society is growing at exponential rates, translating into increasing demands in consumer electronic products, studies have estimated a projected energy consumption increase of 20% by 2030. This amount is expected to surpass the total energy production available worldwide, a major problem that needs a rather quick and affordable solution.

The Project

  • We aim at the development of light-induced and controlled topology for energy-efficient logic operations. Now 10% of the global energy production is used to power electronic circuits, which perform logic operations for the global internet and in consumer devices, and that the projected energy consumption will increase by 20% by 2030.

Our project envisions a new class of dissipation-less quantum devices generated through spatially and temporally structured ultrafast pulses of light to artificially induce and control topologically protected states. With OPTOlogic, we will prepare future quantum devices based on intrinsic and light-induced topological building blocks which move and store information with minimal energy expense, whilst achieving dramatically increased computing power.

We will create a computing architecture that exploits light-induced topology within which near-arbitrary patterns can be written, changed, and rewritten on the fly. The required breakthrough will be achieved with a multi-disciplinary team of experts and SME which unites world-leading experimental, theoretical, and industrial expertise in condensed matter physics, ultrafast laser technology, non-linear optics, strong-field physics, attosecond metrology, quantum optics and gauge theory, quantum computing, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Overall, by increasing the energy efficiency and speed of logical operations, OPTOlogic would have a significant economic, environmental, and social impact and address a market which was valued at 426.0 million USD in 2017.

The Consortium

Coordinated by ICREA Prof. at ICFO Jens Biegert, the consortium is comprised by ICFO, Max Plank Society (MPG), French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), Forschungsverbund Berlin (FVB-MBI), and LightOn,  a multi-disciplinary team of experts and SME which unites world-leading experimental, theoretical, and industrial expertise in condensed matter physics, ultrafast laser technology, attoscience, quantum optics and computing, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

More about the partners