Advanced Fibre Applications

We are dedicated to exploring advanced applications of cutting-edge optical fibres, with a special emphasis on hollow core fibres. These fibres are designed and fabricated by the Zepler Institute Hollow Core Fibre group, while our group focuses on aspects of these newly-emerging fibres from the ‘user perspective’.

About

Our group discovers new areas where optical fibres can revolutionize the field and collaborates with world-leading researchers in these areas. We also develop components needed to use these new fibres, e.g., their interfacing to existing systems.

As well as this, we specialize in time and frequency metrology, working closely with the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), benefiting from emerging technologies such as Optical Frequency Combs. We study how improved timing accuracy will improve a range of applications from telecom/datacom to navigation, and fundamental physics (e.g., gravitational waves detection, quantum, study of chemical reactions, etc.).

Specific topics of interest are:

Distributed measurement techniques along fibres mainly for their characterization, but also applicable to distributed sensing
Studying components made of hollow core fibres such as high-finesse Fabry-Perot resonators
Evacuation of hollow core fibres to enhance their performance in selected applications such as ultrastable fibre interferometers
Hollow core fibres with reduced sensitivity to environment changes (temperature, vibration, acoustic) and their applications
Ultra-stable fibre interferometers and lasers (“stable optical oscillators”) locked to these stable references
Timing and frequency distribution for high-resolution ranging, spectroscopy, microwave generation, astronomy, geodesy, sensing, etc.
High-fidelity generation and transmission of THz signals

People, projects, publications and PhDs

People

Mr Bertalan Patko

Connect with Bertalan

Email: B.Patko@soton.ac.uk

Tel: +447845856720

Dr Meng Ding

Research Fellow

Connect with Meng

Email: Meng.Ding@soton.ac.uk

Professor Natalie Wheeler

Professorial Fellow-Research

Connect with Natalie

Email: nvw1v10@orc.soton.ac.uk

Tel: +44 23 8059 2825

ORCID

Professor Radan Slavik

Professorial Fellow-Research

Research interests

In recent years, there have been significant developments in lightwave technologies enabling wide exploitation of optical phase, as exemplified in particular by the dawn of Coherent Optical Communications - the key enabler for the growth in the capacity of the Internet. This is due to many key breakthroughs in laser technology (low-noise low-cost and compact lasers), new revolutionary concepts that have recently been introduced (e.g., the Optical Frequency Comb, the significance of which was demonstrated by the award of a Nobel Prize in 2005), and significant advances in electronics that, thanks to the increased speeds now possible, can accommodate the processing of very complicated coherent (amplitude + phase) signals.
Another exciting field is Hollow Core Optical fibres, which guides ligth in a central hole surrounded by a microstructure that prevents light escaping from the core. Although known for over 20 years, only very recently their fabrication enabled them to use their full potential.

Accepting applications from PhD students

Connect with Radan

Email: R.Slavik@soton.ac.uk

Tel: +44 23 8059 4523

ORCID