Bio

Salem F. Hegazy received his B.Sc. (Hons.), Diploma, and M.Sc. degrees in electronics and communications engineering from Cairo University, Egypt, in 2002, 2006, and 2011, respectively. In 2017, he completed his Ph.D. in quantum optics and nonlinear optics through a joint-supervision program between CREOL, The College of Optics and Photonics at the University of Central Florida, USA, and the National Institute of Laser Enhanced Sciences (NILES) at Cairo University.

Currently, Salem F. Hegazy holds the position of Associate Professor at the National Institute of Laser Enhanced Sciences, Cairo University. Additionally, he serves as a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Photonics and Smart Materials, Zewail City of Science and Technology. Notably, he is the founder of the Photonic Entanglement Lab at Cairo University and the Quantum Communication Lab at Zewail City of Science and Technology.

His research interests encompass various areas, including optical processing of quantum computation and quantum information, practical security of quantum cryptography, photonic entanglement, optical communications, optical chaos-based systems, and optical image encryption.

HONORS & AWARDS

  • State Award for Organizations and Individuals in Scientific and Technological Innovation, 2021, Presented by The Academy of Scientific Research and Technology (ASRT) and El Shorouk Academy, in the Field of Electronics Engineering and its Applications. 
  • State Encouragement Award in Physical Engineering Sciences, 2019, Most prestigious state award and highest scientific honor presented by the Egyptian government to a young researcher in Egypt.     
  • Encouragement Award in Engineering Sciences, Cairo University, 2018, Presented by Cairo University to distinguished scholars under 45 years.    
  • Shield of Physics Department, 2018, Presented by the Topical Society of Laser Sciences.             
  • Excellent Teaching Assistant Award,2011, Presented by Cairo University.          



Quantum Entanglement Lab : Experiments

The "Source of entangled photon pairs" established in Quantum Entanglement Lab, NILES. 

A 405-nm Laser beam illuminates two crossed nonlinear crystals and produces pairs of photons that share a nonfactorizable wavefunction via a process called spontaneous parametric downconversion (SPDC). These photon pairs are entangled in all optical degrees of freedom: space, time, and polarization.

[Hegazy et al., JOSA B, 2015, https://doi.org/10.1364/JOSAB.32.000445].



The "Source of entangled photon pairs"

A 2D spatial light modulator (SLM) is used to correct the phase of the produced entangle state all over a wide window ~1/3 the cone

[Hegazy et al., Applied Physics Letters, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0022646].

Quantum Key Distribution system to overcome detector-control attacks.

A faint laser pulse is sent from Bob to Alice, who encodes it and then reflects back to Bob. On Bob's gateway is a polarization randomizer U, which scrambles the polarization state of passed light. Thanks to the Faraday mirror (FM), only the faint laser pulse transfered from Bob to Alice and again back to Bob is not affected by the randomizer, and can always be measured on one of the "secure" set of detectors. On the other hand, any light pulses anonymously originated outside Bob site is randomized by the randomizer U and a portion of them is measured on the "alert" detectors set. By hiding the configuration of the randomizer U from any party other than Bob, there is no way to avoid clicking the alert detectors, which unviels the intrusion.

[Hegazy, Obayya, and Saleh, IEEE Journal of Lightwave Technology, 2022 , https://doi.org/10.1109/JLT.2022.3198108]

[Patent US20240039712A1, 2024 https://patents.google.com/patent/US20240039712A1/en] 

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