Pavel Cheben
Pavel Cheben is a Slovak-born Canadian engineer and physicist best known for his contributions to silicon photonics and metamaterial waveguides.
Early life and education
Cheben was born in 1967 in Liptovský Mikuláš, Czechoslovakia. He received an MSc in Electrical Engineering from the Slovak Technical University in 1990 and a PhD in Physics from the Complutense University of Madrid in 1996.Career and research
From 1992 to 1997, Pavel Cheben worked at the National Institute for Aerospace Technology, part of the Spanish Ministry of Defense. In 1997, he joined the National Research Council of Canada, where he became Principal Research Officer in 2016. He currently holds academic appointments at the McMaster University, University of Málaga, University of Žilina, Carleton University, and the University of Ottawa, and also held positions at the University of Toronto and Complutense University of Madrid.Cheben was first to demonstrate a compact polarization-insensitive silicon arrayed waveguide grating multiplexer. He also introduced a high-resolution spectrometer chip and a stationary, on-chip Fourier-transform spectrometer. His invention of a two-dimensional array of surface grating couplers enabled silicon biochemical sensor arrays and optical phased arrays. In 2006, Cheben demonstrated the first subwavelength grating metamaterial waveguides, launching the field of metamaterial integrated photonics. In 2010, Cheben’s team demonstrated the first optical metasurface in a planar waveguide. A variety of high-performance metamaterial waveguide devices was developed, with particular focus on telecommunication wavelengths. These include fiber-to-chip edge couplers; wavelength multiplexers; waveguide crossings; broadband interference and directional couplers; biochemical sensors; anti-reflective waveguide facets; silicon mid-infrared and long-infrared waveguide devices; surface grating couplers; polarization splitters, rotators, and polarizers; ultrafast optical switches; integrated spectral filters; waveguide GRIN lenses; temperature-independent waveguides; mode converters and multiplexers; nanoantennas; optical phased arrays; Huygens’ resonant waveguides; and other devices. This work has been extensively reviewed in Nature, Advances in Optics and Photonics, Proceedings of the IEEE, Laser & Photonics Reviews, and other journals.