A joint team from Seoul National University and the University of Seoul has built a photonic chip that can slow down light in real time, offering a new way to control optical signals inside computer chips. Led by professors Namkyoo Park, Sunkyu Yu, and Xianji Piao, the team used a technique called coupled-resonator-induced transparency, adding two controllable loop couplers that let the chip reshape how light moves without swapping in new hardware.
Conventional optical delay structures are fixed once built, forcing engineers to use separate components for delay, bandwidth control, and frequency conversion. This chip folds those functions into one reconfigurable circuit, adjustable on the fly. Park said the design "greatly enhances design flexibility" for photonic circuits going forward.
The researchers see applications in low-power optical computing for AI servers, data center synchronization, optical buffers, and quantum technology, where fewer discrete components could cut energy use and cost as light-based computing scales up. The work was published in the journal Advanced Science.