How do we see the 21^st century progressing? With lightning-fast and ultra-broadband internet connections for new communication channels and Industry 4.0. With customized manufacturing of nanostructured items in direct digital-to-physical conversion. With optical microscopes that provide an unprecedented resolution for inspecting living cells. The achievement of all these objectives relies on one of the key technologies of the 21^st century: Optics & Photonics.

The connection between information and optical materials/devices/systems is bidirectional. Topic 2 addresses both directions, namely materials for information and information for materials. Concerning optical materials for information, communication networks form the backbone of today’s digital information society. They are prerequisites for megatrends such as ubiquitous connectivity, the internet of things, and the digitalization of industrial production processes (Industry 4.0). To cope with these exponentially increasing information streams, optical communication networks require substantial progress in designing and manufacturing high-performance optical sender/receiver systems. In turn, design in Topic 2 leverages on information technology: It is a long-standing dream of science and technology to design materials, devices, and entire systems digitally on the computer, which could be realized for only a few exceptions to date, rationally designed artificial materials, such as optical metamaterials and photonic crystals, being one of them.

Topic 2 acts as enabler and networks with other topics of the program MSE and other programs such as mechanical metamaterials (Gumbsch and Schwaiger groups) or printed electronics (Aghassi group) in topic 1, 3D scaffolds for cell culture (Bastmeyer group) in topic 3, design and synthesis of molecular quantum emitters (Hunger and Ruben groups) in program Natural, Artificial and Cognitive Information Processing (NACIP), topic 2 “Quantum Computing”, advanced fluorescent markers and optical microscopy methods (Rastegar group) in NACIP, topic 4 “Molecular and Cellular Information Processing” or in program “Engineering Digital Futures” the handling of large microscopy data sets via the Large Scale Data Facility (LSDF) in the future Helmholtz Data Federation (HDF).

Within topic 2, the Helmholtz Centers KIT and Hereon collaborate. The establishment of the Karlsruhe Center for Optics & Photonics (KCOP) will create a unique infrastructure covering a wide range of research activities in Optics & Photonics.

This topic is organized into three subtopics to address the above challenges and objectives.