Projects per year
Personal profile
Research interests
My primary research interest is the development of novel nanofabricated device platforms for manipulating light and sound waves at the nanoscale and engineering controlled interactions between them, and other solid state systems. My current research thrusts are along three main directions, all underpinned by advances made in my group on pushing the operation frequency and efficiency of light-sound interactions in guided wave devices: building resonant acousto-optic quantum transducers to translate quantum states between the microwave and optical frequency domains for connecting distributed superconducting, spin and trapped ion qubit platforms [Balram et al., Nat. Phot. 2016; Valle et al., Opt. Lett. 2019; Wu et al. Phys. Rev. Appl. 2020]; shrinking mobile RF front-ends by ~100x by applying ideas from integrated photonics to guided wave acoustics [Valle et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 2019]; and applying modern developments in RF engineering to an old problem (spin detection) and providing a route towards improved sensitivity by ~8 orders of magnitude.
My work pushes the state of the art in nanofabrication methods and, the performance of devices and systems enabled by this establishing Bristol as a centre for excellence in nanofabrication. To enable this, my group also develops novel metrology tools that allows us to probe and quantify wave phenomena at the nanoscale. My interest in metrology is a natural outgrowth of spending three very enjoyable years as a postdoctoral fellow, working with Kartik Srinivasan at NIST Gaithersburg. Before that, I was a PhD student with David Miller at Stanford.
You can find more about my work at my personal webpage, or check out my papers.
PhD projects:
If you are interested in building nanoscale devices to engineer efficient light matter interactions, please drop me an email. A list of PhD projects I am actively looking to recruit on:
- Photonic-phononic integrated circuits for (quantum) microwave to optical signal transduction:
- Cavity QMD: Piezoelectric micro-resonators as efficient near field transducers for readout and manipulation of nanoscale spin systems:
Structured keywords and research groupings
- QETLabs
- photonics and quantum
- Quantum Engineering Centre for Doctoral Training
Keywords
- nanophotonics
- optomechanics
- piezolectric resonators
- quantum photonics
- spin interfaces
- quantum transducers
- phononic integrated circuits
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Network
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QC:SCALE – Quantum Circuits: Systematically Controlling And Linking Emitters for integrated solid state photonics platforms
1/04/22 → 31/03/25
Project: Research, Parent
Research output
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Piezoelectric Optomechanical Approaches for Efficient Quantum Microwave-to-Optical Signal Transduction: The Need for Co-Design
Coimbatore Balram, K. & Srinivasan, K., 17 Jan 2022, In: Advanced Quantum Technologies. 5, 3, 14 p., 2100095.Research output: Contribution to journal › Review article (Academic Journal) › peer-review
Open Access -
Nitrogen-Vacancy Center Coupled to an Ultrasmall-Mode-Volume Cavity: A High-Efficiency Source of Indistinguishable Photons at 200 K
Smith, J. A., Clear, C., Balram, K. C., McCutcheon, D. P. S. & Rarity, J. G., 10 Mar 2021, In: Physical Review Applied. 15, 3, 034029.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article (Academic Journal) › peer-review
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Microwave-to-Optical Transduction Using a Mechanical Supermode for Coupling Piezoelectric and Optomechanical Resonators
Wu, M., Zeuthen, E., Balram, K. C. & Srinivasan, K., 16 Jan 2020, (E-pub ahead of print) In: Physical Review Applied. 13, 1, 014027.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article (Academic Journal) › peer-review
Open AccessFile34 Citations (Scopus)166 Downloads (Pure)
Datasets
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Datasets for Acousto-optic modulators built using PiezoMUMPS process
Coimbatore Balram, K. (Creator), Valle, S. (Contributor) & Balram, K. (Contributor), University of Bristol, 10 Oct 2019
DOI: 10.5523/bris.2veuu177pu1ru2epio7kkldpcv, http://data.bris.ac.uk/data/dataset/2veuu177pu1ru2epio7kkldpcv
Dataset
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Experimental data for suspended GaAs PIC paper
Coimbatore Balram, K. (Creator), University of Bristol, 3 Aug 2020
DOI: 10.5523/bris.2kddvi3qznr3a2l1jl8eo9194v, http://data.bris.ac.uk/data/dataset/2kddvi3qznr3a2l1jl8eo9194v
Dataset