Luc Thévenaz
Professor Emeritus
luc.thevenaz@epfl.ch +41 21 693 47 74 http://gfo.epfl.ch
Citizenship: Switzerland
EPFL STI-DO
DIA 002 (Diagonale)
Station 11
1015 Lausanne
+41 21 693 47 74
Office:
DIA 002
Office:
DIA 002
EPFL
>
VPA-AVP-PGE
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AVP-PGE-EDOC
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EDPO-ENS
Fields of expertise
Optical & fibre optics sensors
Optical communication
Signal processing
Slow & Fast Light
Biography
Luc Thévenaz received in 1982 the M.Sc. degree in astrophysics from the Observatory of Geneva, Switzerland, and in 1988 the Ph.D. degree in physics from the University of Geneva, Switzerland. He developed at this moment his field of expertise, i.e. fibre optics.In 1988 he joined the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne (EPFL) where he led a research group involved in photonics, namely fibre optics and optical sensing. Since 2023, he is EPFL Emeritus Professor.
Research topics include Brillouin-scattering fibre sensors, nonlinear fibre optics, slow & fast light and laser spectroscopy in gases.
His main achievements are:
- the invention of a novel configuration for distributed Brillouin fibre sensing based on a single laser source, resulting in a high intrinsic stability making for the first time field measurements possible,
- the development of a photoacoustic gas trace sensor using a near infra-red semiconductor laser, detecting a gas concentration at the ppb level,
- the first experimental demonstration of optically-controlled slow & fast light in optical fibres, realized at ambient temperature and operating at any wavelength since based on stimulated Brillouin scattering. The first negative group velocity of light was also realized in optical fibres using this approach.
- the demonstration that amplification through stimulated Brillouin scattering in gases can outperform any nonlinear gain observed to date and offers innovative and nice prospects for sensing and amplification using the novel hollow core fibres.
In 1991, he visited the PUC University in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil where he worked on the generation of picosecond pulses in semiconductor lasers.
In 1991-1992 he stayed at Stanford University, USA, where he participated in the development of a Brillouin laser gyroscope.
He joined in 1998 the company Orbisphere Laboratories SA in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, as Expert Scientist to develop gas trace sensors based on photoacoustic laser spectroscopy.
In 1998 and 1999 he visited the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in Daejon, South Korea, where he worked on fibre laser current sensors.
In 2000 he co-founded the spin-off company Omnisens that is developing and commercializing advanced photonic instrumentation.
In 2007 he visited Tel Aviv University where he studied the all-optical control of polarization in optical fibres.
During winter 2010 he stayed at the University of Sydney where he studied applications of stimulated Brillouin scattering in chalcogenide waveguides.
In 2014 he stayed at the Polytechnic University of Valencia where he worked on microwave applications of stimulated Brillouin scattering.
He was member of the Consortium in the FP7 European Project GOSPEL "Governing the speed of light", was Chairman of the European COST Action 299 "FIDES: Optical Fibres for New Challenges Facing the Information Society" and is author or co-author of some 480 publications and 12 patents. He is now Coordinator of the H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Networks FINESSE (FIbre NErve Systems for Sensing).
He is co-Executive Editor-in-Chief of the journal "Nature Light: Science & Applications" and is Member of the Editorial Board (Associate Editor) for the journal "APL Photonics" & "Laser & Photonics Reviews". He is also Fellow of both the IEEE and the Optical Society (OSA) and Full Member of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences (SATW).
Name pronunciation
I have frequently observed that the pronunciation of my family name causes an embarrassing situation to non-Swiss people, including native French people.Here is the rule: the "h" and the final "z" are not pronounced.
Using an English phonetic transcription my last name must be pronounced "Teyvannah".
Easier to say than to write!
Mission
Please note that the Group for Fibre Optics is no longer hiring new collaborators since my academic supervision will be discontinued mid-2023.Publications
Selected publications
Luc Thévenaz Nature Photonics 2(8), 474-481 (2008) |
Slow and fast light in optical fibres |
Fan Yang; Flavien Gyger; Luc Thévenaz Nature Photonics 14 (11), 700-708 (2020) |
Intense Brillouin amplification in gas using hollow-core waveguides |
Fan Yang, Flavien Gyger, Adrien Godet, Jacques Chrétien, Li Zhang, Meng Pang, Jean-Charles Beugnot & Luc Thévenaz Nature Communications 13, Article number: 1432 (2022) |
Large evanescently-induced Brillouin scattering at the surrounding of a nanofibre |
Flavien Gyger, Junqiu Liu, Fan Yang, Jijun He, Arslan S. Raja, Rui Ning Wang, Sunil A. Bhave, Tobias J. Kippenberg, and Luc Thévenaz Physical Review Letters 124 (1), 013902 (2020) |
Observation of Stimulated Brillouin Scattering in Silicon Nitride Integrated Waveguides |
Desmond M. Chow, Zhisheng Yang, Marcelo A. Soto, and Luc Thévenaz
Nature Communications 9, 2990 (2018) |
Distributed forward Brillouin sensor based on local light phase recovery |
Marcelo A. Soto, Mehdi Alem, Mohammad Amin Shoaie, Armand Vedadi, Camille-Sophie Brès, Luc Thévenaz, and Thomas Schneider Nature Communications 4, Article number:2898, (2013) |
Optical sinc-shaped Nyquist pulses of exceptional quality |
Xizi Sun, Zhisheng Yang, Xiaobin Hong, Simon Zaslawski, Sheng Wang, Marcelo A. Soto, Xia Gao, Jian Wu, and Luc Thévenaz Nature Communications 11, Article number: 5774 (2020) |
Genetic-optimised aperiodic code for distributed optical fibre sensors |
Marcelo A. Soto, Jaime A. Ramirez, and Luc Thévenaz Nature Communications 7, Article number 10870 (2016) |
Intensifying the response of distributed optical fibre sensors using 2D and 3D image restoration |
Andrey Denisov, Marcelo A. Soto, and Luc Thévenaz Nature Light: Science & Applications 5, e16074 (2016) |
Going beyond 1000000 resolved points in a Brillouin distributed fiber sensor: theoretical analysis and experimental demonstration |
Avi Zadok, Yair Antman, Nikolay Primerov, Andrey Denisov, Juan Sancho and Luc Thévenaz Physical Review Letters 124, 013902 (2020) |
Random-access distributed fiber sensing |
Pant, R., Poulton, C. G., Choi, D.-Y., McFarlane, H., Hile, S., Li, E., Thévenaz, L., Luther-Davies, B., Madden, S. J. and Eggleton, B. J. Opt. Express 19(9), pp. 8285-8290 (2011) |
On-chip stimulated Brillouin scattering |
Marcelo A. Soto and Luc Thévenaz Optics Express 21 (25), 31347-31366 (2013) |
Modeling and evaluating the performance of Brillouin distributed optical fiber sensors |
Luc Thévenaz, Stella Foaleng Mafang, and Jie Lin Opt. Express 21, 14017-14035 (2013). |
Effect of pulse depletion in a Brillouin optical time-domain analysis system |
Beugnot, J.-C., Tur, M., Foaleng Mafang, S. and Thévenaz, L. Opt. Express 19(8), pp. 7381-7397 (2011) |
Distributed Brillouin sensing with sub-meter spatial resolution: modeling and processing |
Zadok, A., Zilka, E., Eyal, A., Thévenaz, L. and Tur, M. Opt. Express 16(26), pp. 21692-21707 (2008) |
Vector analysis of stimulated Brillouin scattering amplification in standard single-mode fibers |
Miguel González-Herráez, Kwang-Yong Song, and Luc Thévenaz Applied Physics Letters 87, 081113 (2005). |
Optically controlled slow and fast light in optical fibers using stimulated Brillouin scattering |
Miguel González Herráez, Kwang Yong Song, and Luc Thévenaz Opt. Express 14, 1395-1400 (2006) |
Arbitrary-bandwidth Brillouin slow light in optical fibers |
Kwang Yong Song, Miguel González Herráez, and Luc Thévenaz Opt. Express 13, 82-88 (2005) |
Observation of pulse delaying and advancement in optical fibers using stimulated Brillouin scattering |
Marc Niklès, Luc Thévenaz, and Philippe A. Robert Journal of Lightwave Technology 15 (10), 1842 (1997) |
Brillouin gain spectrum characterization in single-mode optical fibers |
Other publications
Teaching & PhD
Teaching
Electrical and Electronics Engineering