About

Debra Blumenthal is an Associate Professor in the History Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with a specialization in Medieval and Early Modern Spain, the Premodern Mediterranean, and related fields such as gender history, the history of medicine, and comparative slavery. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in 2000 and is an accomplished historian focusing on late medieval and early modern Iberia, exploring Muslim, Christian, and Jewish relations, as well as the history of slavery and race in the Mediterranean world. Her research interests include gender history and the history of women’s health, with current projects examining the role of slavery in medical knowledge production and constructions of maternity during the late medieval period. Her notable publications include the book "Enemies and Familiars: Slavery and Mastery in Fifteenth-Century Valencia" and numerous articles on topics such as medical expertise, slavery, and gender in medieval Valencia.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Optoelectronics
• Materials science
• Physics
• Optics
• Electronic engineering
• Telecommunications
• Engineering

Selected publications

• Integrated optical frequency division for microwave and mmWave generation

  Nature · 2024 · 156 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Optoelectronics
  • Materials science

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  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• 36  Hz integral linewidth laser based on a photonic integrated 4.0  m coil resonator

  Optica · 2022 · 102 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Optics
  • Materials science
  • Optoelectronics

  Laser stabilization sits at the heart of many precision scientific experiments and applications, including quantum information science, metrology, and atomic timekeeping. Many of these systems narrow the laser linewidth and stabilize the carrier by use of Pound–Drever–Hall (PDH) locking to a table-scale, ultrahigh quality factor (Q), vacuum spaced Fabry–Perot reference cavity. Integrating these cavities to bring characteristics of PDH stabilization to the chip scale is critical to reducing their size, cost, and weight, and enabling a wide range of portable and system-on-chip applications. We report a significant advance in integrated laser linewidth narrowing, stabilization, and noise reduction by use of a photonic integrated 4.0 m long coil resonator to stabilize a semiconductor laser. We achieve a 36 Hz <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mo>/</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:mrow> <mml:mi>π</mml:mi> </mml:math> -integral linewidth, Allan deviation of <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mn>1.8</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> <mml:mo>×</mml:mo> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:msup> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mn>10</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mo>−</mml:mo> <mml:mn>13</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msup> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> at 10 ms measurement time, and a 2.3 kHz/s drift—to the best of our knowledge, the lowest integral linewidth and highest stability demonstrated for an integrated waveguide reference cavity. This performance represents over an order of magnitude improvement in integral linewidth and frequency noise over previous integrated waveguide PDH stabilized reference cavities and bulk-optic and integrated injection locked approaches, and over two orders of magnitude improvement in frequency and phase noise than integrated injection locked approaches. Two different wavelength coil designs are demonstrated, stabilizing lasers at 1550 nm and 1319 nm. The resonator is bus-coupled to a 4.0 m long coil, with a 49 MHz free spectral range, mode volume of <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mn>1.0</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> <mml:mo>×</mml:mo> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:msup> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mn>10</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mn>10</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msup> </mml:mrow> <mml:mspace width="thickmathspace"/> <mml:mtext>µ</mml:mtext> <mml:msup> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">m</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> <mml:mn>3</mml:mn> </mml:msup> </mml:math> , and 142 million intrinsic <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mi>Q</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> , fabricated in a CMOS compatible, ultralow loss silicon nitride waveguide platform. Our measurements and simulations show that the thermorefractive noise floor for this particular cavity is reached for frequencies down to 20 Hz in an ambient environment with simple passive vibration isolation and without vacuum or thermal isolation. The thermorefractive noise limited performance is estimated to yield an 8 Hz <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mo>/</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:mrow> <mml:mi>π</mml:mi> </mml:math> -integral linewidth and Allan deviation of <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mn>5</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> <mml:mo>×</mml:mo> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:msup> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mn>10</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mo>−</mml:mo> <mml:mn>14</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msup> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> at 10 ms, opening a stability regime that heretofore has been available only in fundamentally non-integrated systems. These results demonstrate the potential to bring the characteristics of laboratory-scale stabilized lasers to the integrated, wafer-scale compatible chip scale, and are of interest for a number of applications in quantum technologies and atomic, molecular, and optical physics, and with further developments below 10 Hz linewidth, can be highly relevant to ultralow noise microwave generation.

  DOI

• 2022 Roadmap on integrated quantum photonics

  Journal of Physics Photonics · 2022 · 393 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  • Electronic engineering

  Integrated photonics is at the heart of many classical technologies, from optical communications to biosensors, LIDAR, and data center fiber interconnects. There is strong evidence that these integrated technologies will play a key role in quantum systems as they grow from few-qubit prototypes to tens of thousands of qubits. The underlying laser and optical quantum technologies, with the required functionality and performance, can only be realized through the integration of these components onto quantum photonic integrated circuits (QPICs) with accompanying electronics. In the last decade, remarkable advances in quantum photonic integration and a dramatic reduction in optical losses have enabled benchtop experiments to be scaled down to prototype chips with improvements in efficiency, robustness, and key performance metrics. The reduction in size, weight, power, and improvement in stability that will be enabled by QPICs will play a key role in increasing the degree of complexity and scale in quantum demonstrations. In the next decade, with sustained research, development, and investment in the quantum photonic ecosystem (i.e. PIC-based platforms, devices and circuits, fabrication and integration processes, packaging, and testing and benchmarking), we will witness the transition from single- and few-function prototypes to the large-scale integration of multi-functional and reconfigurable QPICs that will define how information is processed, stored, transmitted, and utilized for quantum computing, communications, metrology, and sensing. This roadmap highlights the current progress in the field of integrated quantum photonics, future challenges, and advances in science and technology needed to meet these challenges.

  DOI

• Photonic integration for UV to IR applications

  APL Photonics · 2020 · 117 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  • Electronic engineering

  Photonic integration opens the potential to reduce size, power, and cost of applications normally relegated to table- and rack-sized systems. Today, a wide range of precision, high-end, ultra-sensitive, communication and computation, and measurement and scientific applications, including atomic clocks, quantum communications, processing, and high resolution spectroscopy, are ready to make the leap from the lab to the chip. However, many of these applications operate at wavelengths not accessible to the silicon on insulator-based silicon photonics integration platform due to absorption, power handling, unwanted nonlinearities, and other factors. Next generation photonic integration will require ultra-wideband photonic circuit platforms that scale from the ultraviolet to the infrared and that offer a rich set of linear and nonlinear circuit functions as well as low loss and high power handling capabilities. This article provides an assessment of the field in ultra-wideband photonic waveguides to bring power efficient, ultra-high performance systems to the chip-scale and enable compact transformative precision measurement, signal processing, computation, and communication techniques.

  DOI

Recent grants

• EAGER: Large Scale Photonic Molecules and Applications

  NSF · $150k · 2017–2019

Frequent coauthors

• John E. Bowers

  116 shared

• Milan L. Mašanović

  Freedom Photonics (United States)

  70 shared

• Kaikai Liu

  65 shared

• H.N. Poulsen

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  57 shared

• L.A. Coldren

  54 shared

• Mark Harrington

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  49 shared

• Jiawei Wang

  University of California System

  49 shared

• Nitesh Chauhan

  48 shared

Awards & honors

• Winner of the 2011 Premio del Rey
• Honorable Mention, 2010 Best Book Prize, Society for Medieva…
• Winner of the 2024 Nursing Clio Best Article Prize
• Winner of the Best Essay Prize given annually by the Society…

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