Mercedeh Khajavikhan

About

Professor Mercedeh Khajavikhan joined the faculty of the University of Southern California in the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering, Viterbi College of Engineering, in August 2019 as an Associate Professor and was promoted to full professor rank in January 2022. She also holds a joint appointment at the Department of Physics & Astronomy, Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, & Sciences at USC. She received her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota in 2009. After completing her doctorate, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California in San Diego, focusing on the design and development of nanolasers, plasmonic devices, and silicon photonics components. In August 2012, she began her career as an Assistant Professor at the College of Optics and Photonics (CREOL) at the University of Central Florida, where she primarily worked on unraveling novel phenomena in active photonic systems. Professor Khajavikhan's research centers on optics and photonics, with a particular emphasis on active photonic systems and nanophotonic devices. She has been recognized with several prestigious awards, including the NSF Early CAREER Award in 2015, the ONR Young Investigator Award in 2016, the DARPA Young Faculty Award in 2018, the University of Central Florida Reach for the Stars Award in 2017, the UCF Luminary Award in 2018, and the DARPA Director's Fellowship in 2020. She is a fellow of Optica (formerly the Optical Society of…

Research topics

• Quantum mechanics
• Theoretical physics
• Physics
• Mathematics
• Classical mechanics

Selected publications

• Non‐Hermitian and topological photonics: optics at an exceptional point

  Nanophotonics · 2020 · 278 citations

  Abstract In the past few years, concepts from non‐Hermitian (NH) physics, originally developed within the context of quantum field theories, have been successfully deployed over a wide range of physical settings where wave dynamics are known to play a key role. In optics, a special class of NH Hamiltonians – which respects parity‐time symmetry – has been intensely pursued along several fronts. What makes this family of systems so intriguing is the prospect of phase transitions and NH singulariti…

  DOI

• Observation of chiral state transfer without encircling an exceptional point

  Nature · 2022 · 113 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  DOI

• Selective filtering of photonic quantum entanglement via anti–parity-time symmetry

  Science · 2025-03-27 · 18 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Entanglement is a key resource for quantum computing, sensing, and communication, but it is susceptible to decoherence. To address this, research in quantum optics has explored filtering techniques such as photon ancillas and Rydberg atom blockade to restore entangled states. We introduce an approach to entanglement retrieval that exploits the features of non-Hermitian systems. By designing an anti-parity-time two-state guiding configuration, we demonstrate efficient extraction of entanglement f…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Roadmap on Neuromorphic Photonics

  ArXiv.org · 2025-01-14 · 15 citations

  preprintOpen access

  This roadmap consolidates recent advances while exploring emerging applications, reflecting the remarkable diversity of hardware platforms, neuromorphic concepts, and implementation philosophies reported in the field. It emphasizes the critical role of cross-disciplinary collaboration in this rapidly evolving field.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Observation of Joule–Thomson photon-gas expansion

  Nature Physics · 2025-01-14 · 8 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• EAGER: Fundamental Considerations in Using Non-Hermitian Microscale Resonant Optical Structures for Rotation Sensing

  NSF · $48k · 2019–2021

• CAREER: Novel Photonic Structures Using Non-Hermitian Exceptional Points

  NSF · $291k · 2019–2021

• CAREER: Novel Photonic Structures Using Non-Hermitian Exceptional Points

  NSF · $500k · 2015–2019

Frequent coauthors

• Demetrios N. Christodoulides

  University of Central Florida

  192 shared

• William E. Hayenga

  72 shared

• Midya Parto

  56 shared

• Paweł S. Jung

  51 shared

• Hossein Hodaei

  Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

  51 shared

• Absar U. Hassan

  46 shared

• Fan O. Wu

  Fuzhou University

  40 shared

• Georgios G. Pyrialakos

  University of Southern California

  35 shared

Labs

• Khajavikhan Optics and Photonics GroupPI

Education

• Ph.D., Electrical Engineering

  University of Southern California

  2010

• M.S., Electrical Engineering

  University of Southern California

  2006

• B.S., Electrical Engineering

  Sharif University of Technology

  2004

Awards & honors

• NSF Early CAREER Award (2015)
• ONR Young Investigator Award (2016)
• DARPA Young Faculty Award (2018)
• University of Central Florida Reach for the Stars Award (201…
• UCF Luminary Award (2018)

Similar researchers at University of Southern California

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