About

Jelena Vuckovic is the Jensen Huang Professor of Global Leadership and a Professor of Electrical Engineering, with courtesy appointment in Applied Physics, at Stanford University. She earned her PhD from Caltech in 2002 and currently leads the Nanoscale and Quantum Photonics (NQP) Lab located in the Ginzton Laboratory at Stanford. Her research focuses on photonics, quantum science and engineering, quantum optics, photonics inverse design, nonlinear optics, and cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED). Professor Vuckovic's current projects include semiconductor quantum systems such as diamond, silicon carbide, and gallium arsenide, where she investigates cavity QED quantum simulators, quantum networks, and quantum sensors. She also works on heterogeneously integrated, inverse designed photonics for applications in optical interconnects, computing, and sensors, as well as on-chip integrated laser systems including titanium:sapphire lasers, isolators, and laser frequency stabilization. Additionally, her research explores light-matter interaction phenomena such as multi-emitter cavity QED, squeezed light driving of cavity QED systems, and free electron-solid state spin interactions. Professor Vuckovic is actively involved in teaching courses on applied quantum mechanics and quantum photonics at Stanford, contributing to the advancement of knowledge in these cutting-edge fields.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Physics
• Optoelectronics
• Quantum mechanics
• Telecommunications
• Engineering
• Materials science
• Optics
• Electronic engineering
• Chemical physics
• Engineering physics
• Chemistry
• Condensed matter physics
• Crystallography
• Computer hardware
• Computer architecture
• Electrical engineering
• Nanotechnology

Selected publications

• Inverse design for scalable photonic systems

  Nature Reviews Materials · 2026-04-20 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Single-Chip 1.024 Tb/s Optical Receiver for High-Speed Optical links

  ArXiv.org · 2026-01-12

  articleOpen access

  Integrated optical transceivers, utilizing wavelength-division-multiplexing, offer a path forward for implementation of compact, high-bandwidth and energy-efficient interconnects for future data centers. Here we report the demonstration of a monolithically integrated optical receiver in 45nm CMOS, where efficient multi-layer optical demultiplexing with capacitive tuning, energy efficient electronics and wideband inverse designed grating couplers enable implementation of a 32-channel receiver chip based on wavelength-division multiplexing. The chip operates at an aggregate data-rate of 1.024 Tb/s with all channels operating simultaneously at a data-rate of 32 Gb/s/channel achieving a record energy efficiency of 71 fJ/b, including the power consumption of both the electronic circuitry and the tuning and control of photonic devices, and a record bandwidth density of 4 Tb/s/mm2. The receiver achieves a bit-error-rate below 1E-12 without requiring equalization, error correction or digital processing. Inverse-designed broadband grating couplers provide efficient, low-loss optical coupling into the chip. An on-chip demultiplexer, composed of Mach-Zehnder interferometers (MZIs) and ring resonators, offers a large channel-to-channel isolation sufficient for error-free operation. Capacitive phase shifters embedded within the ring resonators of the demultiplexer are used for wavelength alignment at a zero static power consumption. MZIs and ring-resonators are periodically selected and autonomously locked to the wavelength of the corresponding optical carrier. The implemented monolithic receiver offers a scalable, energy-efficient and reliable solution for the beyond Tb/s optical interconnects.

  PublisherOA PDF

• A general framework for interactions between electron beams and quantum optical systems

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2026-01-29

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  We provide a theoretical framework to describe the dynamics of a free-electron beam interacting with quantized bound systems in arbitrary electromagnetic environments. This expands the quantum optics toolbox to incorporate free-electron beams for applications in highly tunable quantum control, imaging, and spectroscopy at the nanoscale. The framework recovers previously studied results and shows that electromagnetic environments can amplify the intrinsically weak coupling between a free-electron and a bound electron to reach previously inaccessible interaction regimes. We leverage this enhanced coupling for experimentally feasible protocols in coherent qubit control and towards the nondestructive readout and projective control of the electron beam's quantum-number statistics. Our framework is broadly applicable to microwave-frequency qubits, optical nanophotonics, cavity quantum electrodynamics, and emerging platforms at the interface of electron microscopy and quantum information.

  PublisherDOI

• Inverse design for scalable photonic systems

  ArXiv.org · 2026-02-21

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Over the past two decades, photonic inverse design has emerged as a powerful approach to implement photonic devices with improved performance, or realize new functionalities. While the efforts over the first decade focused on proof of concept devices designed and fabricated in university labs, the focus over the past 5-10 years has shifted towards implementation of scalable photonic systems. This article reviews this recent progress, challenges and new directions in photonics inverse design, thus providing a complementary and updated review of the field. We focus on large scale three dimensional photonic inverse design, including metasurfaces, translation of inverse design to commercial foundries and practical silicon photonics, application of photonic inverse design to different materials systems, wavelengths, and optical effects, and finally new directions such as inverse design of quantum systems.

  PublisherOA PDF

• A general framework for interactions between electron beams and quantum optical systems

  ArXiv.org · 2026-01-29

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  We provide a theoretical framework to describe the dynamics of a free-electron beam interacting with quantized bound systems in arbitrary electromagnetic environments. This expands the quantum optics toolbox to incorporate free-electron beams for applications in highly tunable quantum control, imaging, and spectroscopy at the nanoscale. The framework recovers previously studied results and shows that electromagnetic environments can amplify the intrinsically weak coupling between a free-electron and a bound electron to reach previously inaccessible interaction regimes. We leverage this enhanced coupling for experimentally feasible protocols in coherent qubit control and towards the nondestructive readout and projective control of the electron beam's quantum-number statistics. Our framework is broadly applicable to microwave-frequency qubits, optical nanophotonics, cavity quantum electrodynamics, and emerging platforms at the interface of electron microscopy and quantum information.

  PublisherOA PDF

• Overcoming Memory Bandwidth Limitations In GPU-Accelerated Finite-Difference Time-Domain Simulations: A systolic update scheme

  IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine · 2026-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The exponential growth of artificial intelligence (AI) has fueled the development of high-bandwidth photonic interconnect fabrics as a critical component of modern AI supercomputers [1]. As the demand for ever-increasing AI compute and connectivity continues to grow, the need for high-throughput photonic simulation engines to accelerate and even revolutionize photonic design and verification workflows will become an increasingly indispensable capability for the integrated photonics industry. Unfortunately, the mainstay and workhorse of photonic simulation algorithms, the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method [10], is a memory-intensive and computationally lightweight algorithm that is fundamentally misaligned with modern computational platforms, which are equipped to deal with compute-heavy, memory-light workloads instead. This article proposes a systolic update scheme for the FDTD method, which circumvents this mismatch by reducing the need for global synchronization as well as minimizing the amount of global memory access needed per cell update by aggressively reusing existing field values already present within the GPU cache. We present an initial prototype of our scheme on a full 3D FDTD algorithm that achieves a performance of ∼0.15 trillion cell updates per second (TCUPS) on a single Nvidia H100 GPU. Our work paves the way for the increasingly efficient, cost-effective, and high-throughput photonic simulation engines needed to continue powering the AI era.

  PublisherDOI

• Single-Chip 1.024 Tb/s Optical Receiver for High-Speed Optical links

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2026-01-12

  preprintOpen access

  Integrated optical transceivers, utilizing wavelength-division-multiplexing, offer a path forward for implementation of compact, high-bandwidth and energy-efficient interconnects for future data centers. Here we report the demonstration of a monolithically integrated optical receiver in 45nm CMOS, where efficient multi-layer optical demultiplexing with capacitive tuning, energy efficient electronics and wideband inverse designed grating couplers enable implementation of a 32-channel receiver chip based on wavelength-division multiplexing. The chip operates at an aggregate data-rate of 1.024 Tb/s with all channels operating simultaneously at a data-rate of 32 Gb/s/channel achieving a record energy efficiency of 71 fJ/b, including the power consumption of both the electronic circuitry and the tuning and control of photonic devices, and a record bandwidth density of 4 Tb/s/mm2. The receiver achieves a bit-error-rate below 1E-12 without requiring equalization, error correction or digital processing. Inverse-designed broadband grating couplers provide efficient, low-loss optical coupling into the chip. An on-chip demultiplexer, composed of Mach-Zehnder interferometers (MZIs) and ring resonators, offers a large channel-to-channel isolation sufficient for error-free operation. Capacitive phase shifters embedded within the ring resonators of the demultiplexer are used for wavelength alignment at a zero static power consumption. MZIs and ring-resonators are periodically selected and autonomously locked to the wavelength of the corresponding optical carrier. The implemented monolithic receiver offers a scalable, energy-efficient and reliable solution for the beyond Tb/s optical interconnects.

  PublisherDOI

• Many-body entanglement in solid-state emitters

  Nature Reviews Materials · 2026-02-17 · 2 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Inverse design for scalable photonic systems

  Open MIND · 2026-02-21

  preprintSenior author

  Over the past two decades, photonic inverse design has emerged as a powerful approach to implement photonic devices with improved performance, or realize new functionalities. While the efforts over the first decade focused on proof of concept devices designed and fabricated in university labs, the focus over the past 5-10 years has shifted towards implementation of scalable photonic systems. This article reviews this recent progress, challenges and new directions in photonics inverse design, thus providing a complementary and updated review of the field. We focus on large scale three dimensional photonic inverse design, including metasurfaces, translation of inverse design to commercial foundries and practical silicon photonics, application of photonic inverse design to different materials systems, wavelengths, and optical effects, and finally new directions such as inverse design of quantum systems.

  DOI

• Three-wave-mixing element with quantum paraelectric materials

  Physical Review Applied · 2026-01-20

  article
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• High efficiency nonlinear frequency conversion based photonic crystal light sources

  NSF · $360k · 2010–2013

• Cavity QED with a Single Quantum Dot in a Photonic Crystal Cavity: Photon Blockade, Dressed States, and Controlled Phase Shift

  NSF · $460k · 2008–2013

• Quantum and Nonlinear Photonics in Silicon Carbide

  NSF · $420k · 2014–2017

• Scalable diamond quantum systems

  NSF · $400k · 2022–2025

• RAISE: TAQS: Engineering high quality, practical qubits in diamond

  NSF · $1.0M · 2018–2022

Frequent coauthors

• Dirk Englund

  Vassar College

  112 shared

• Arka Majumdar

  110 shared

• Konstantinos G. Lagoudakis

  University of Strathclyde

  87 shared

• Andrei Faraon

  78 shared

• Kevin A. Fischer

  77 shared

• Constantin Dory

  72 shared

• Daniil M. Lukin

  67 shared

• Logan Su

  Stanford University

  65 shared

Labs

• Nanoscale and Quantum Photonics LabPI

Education

• Ph.D., Applied Physics

  Stanford University

  2002

• M.S., Physics

  University of Belgrade

  1998

• B.S., Physics

  University of Belgrade

  1996