Dan Dalacu

Bio

Dr. Dan Dalacu (NRC, Ottawa) is an Adjunct Professor at Queen's University, the University of Ottawa and a Senior Research Officer with the National Research Council of Canada. He received his Ph.D. in Engineering Physics from Ecole Polytechnique, University of Montreal. His thesis focused on surface plasmon physics in metal nanoparticle composite thin films. In 2001 he joined the Nanofabrication Group in the Institute for Microstructural Sciences at the National Research Council of Canada. During the last few decades at the NRC, he has been involved in the study of III-V semiconductor quantum dots. The main focus of the research has been on the integration of quantum dots with photonic nanostructures. Devices based on excitons in single quantum dots embedded in photonic nanostructures, such as photonic crystal cavities and photonic nanowire waveguides, were developed for the efficient generation of non-classical light – single photons and entangled photon pairs. Such sources of non-classical light are integral in the field of quantum information processing. A central theme of the research is controlled quantum dot nucleation at predetermined positions allowing for the fabrication of single quantum dot devices by design and addressing issues of scalability required in technological applications. He has over 60 peer-reviewed publications and an H-index of 25. His extensive international collaborators include Val Zwiller (KTH, Sweden), Mike Reimer (IQC, Waterloo), and Gregor Weihs (Innsbruck, Austria).

Dr. Dalacu leads the growth efforts at NRC related to QDs in nanowires, supplying fabrication expertise, samples, and data on semiconductor QD and nanowire samples. He also works with other NRC researchers to explore related research areas with photonic crystals and hybrid devices (e.g., with the optomechanical activities in Sankey’s lab) that overlap with other research themes at the Nanophotonics Research Centre. Dr. Dalacu also provides expertise in the Queen’s quantum optics spectroscopy lab.

Research Interests

• Experimental Photonics
• Quantum optics
• Semiconductor quantum dots
• Semiconductor nanowires

Publications