Auburn Photonic Systems Lab

gao-profile.jpg

Zihe Gao

Assistant Professor at Auburn ECE

422 Broun Hall

341 War Eagle Way

Auburn, AL 36849

Email is the best way to reach me.

We are pioneering next-generation photonic devices and systems tailored for imaging, communications, and computing.

Photons are the ultimate carriers of information, serving as our primary means of perceiving the world and transmitting information, both through our own eyes and via optical fibers, cameras, sensors, and machine vision. Emerging technologies, including wearable, implantable devices, and autonomous systems, pose stringent requirements on the optical modules in terms of size, weight, power, and performance. Traditional optical systems fall short of these rigorous demands.

To address this gap, our research targets three major areas of technological advancement:

  • Innovative Optical Sources: Distributed, ultrafast, and reconfigurable laser arrays.
  • Meta-Optics with information processing capabilities.
  • Quantum-Enhanced Techniques beyond the classical limits of optical sensing and imaging.

By harnessing the synergy of heterogeneously integrated photonic and microelectronic chips, we explore devices and systems that are not only compact and robust but also scalable in terms of manufacturing.

News

Jul 10, 2026 Our UIUC-led Applied Physics Letters paper, “Buried dielectric quasi-photonic-crystal surface-emitting lasers”, is now online and was selected as an APL cover article. Cover PDF
Jan 30, 2026 Our PRL paper, “Supersymmetric Isophase Acoustic Potentials”, is now online. We demonstrate supersymmetric transformations in acoustics through reconfigurable acoustic metamaterials that preserve broadband scattering characteristics.
Aug 18, 2025 Our team with Prof. Pengyu Chen advanced to Stage 2 of the NIH/NCATS Quantum Sensing Technology Challenge for quantum-correlation-based exosome profiling.
Aug 07, 2025 Zihe gave an invited talk, “Topological quadratic-node semimetals enabled by cross-pseudospin coupling in photonic microring arrays”, at SPIE Optics + Photonics 2025.
Feb 20, 2025 Our PRX paper (by Penn) has been published. It is the first demonstration of high-dimensional quantum key distribution using spin-orbit microlasers (with its emission tunable in a 4-dimensional Hilbert space). Congrats to the team!