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Research project

Airguide Photonics

Project overview

Optical fibres lie at the heart of our increasingly technological society. For example, they support the internet and mobile communications that we all now take for granted, they save lives through medical diagnosis and interventions using fibre-optic endoscopes, and they enable the mass production of a huge array of commercial products through fibre laser based materials processing.

Within our Airguide Photonics research programme we aim to translate Hollow Core Fibre (HCF) technology from the research lab to a deployable fibre technology, unleashing innovative applications across a broad range of science and engineering fields.

“The ORC has been pioneering the development of fibre optics and advancing communications technology for many years and has an impressive record of using research funding to collaborate with academic and industry partners. The AirGuide Photonics programme promises to push at the boundaries once more. We are confident that the research will uncover more discoveries and lead to world-leading innovations.”
Professor Tom Rodden - Deputy Chief Executive of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)

Staff

Lead researchers

Professor David Richardson FREng, FRS

Research interests

  • Hollow Core Optical Fibres
  • Optical Communications
  • High Power Fibre Lasers
Connect with David

Email: djr@orc.soton.ac.uk

Other researchers

Professor Sir David Payne KBE CBE FRS FREng

Professor of Photonics

Research interests

  • high-power fibre lasers
  • spun fibres for control of dispersion, now extensively used in undersea fibre cables
  • the Er/Yb cladding-pumped fibre amplifier used for cable television distribution
Connect with Sir David

Email: dnp@orc.soton.ac.uk

Professor Jayanta Sahu

Professorial Fellow-Research
Connect with Jayanta

Email: jks@orc.soton.ac.uk

Professor Periklis Petropoulos

Professor

Research interests

  • Optical communications,
  • All-optical signal processing,
  • Novel fibre and waveguide technologies
Connect with Periklis

Email: pp@orc.soton.ac.uk

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. 
Connect with Radan

Email: R.Slavik@soton.ac.uk

Professor Francesco Poletti

Professorial Fellow-Research

Research interests

  • Hollow Core Optical Fibres: design and fabrication
  • Optical Communications: high capacity and low latency
  • Novel active and passive optical fibres
Connect with Francesco

Email: frap@orc.soton.ac.uk

Collaborating research institutes, centres and groups

Research outputs

Long-term stability of hollow core to standard optical fiber interconnection
Daniel Dousek, Matěj Komanec, Ailing Zhong, Dmytro Suslov, Stanislav Zvánovec, Petr Veselý, Yong Chen, Thomas D. Bradley, Eric R. Numkam Fokoua, Francesco Poletti, David J. Richardson & Radan Slavík, 2021
DOI: 10.1117/12.2592377
Type: conference
Finesse Limits in hollow core fiber based Fabry-Perot interferometers
Meng Ding, Eric Numkam Fokoua, Thomas J. Bradley, Francesco Poletti, David J. Richardson & Radan Slavík, 2021, IEEE Journal of Lightwave Technology, 39(13), 4489-4495
DOI: 10.1109/JLT.2021.3074140
Type: article
Optical fiber delay lines in microwave photonics: sensitivity to temperature and means to reduce it
Meng Ding, Zitong Feng, David Marpaung, Xi Zhang, Matej Komanec, Dmytro Suslov, Daniel Dousek, Stanislav Zvanovec, Eric Numkam Fokoua, Thomas Bradley, Francesco Poletti, David J. Richardson & Radan Slavík, 2021, IEEE Journal of Lightwave Technology, 39(8), 2311-2318
DOI: 10.1109/JLT.2021.3052609
Type: article
Polarization effects on thermally stable latency in hollow-core photonic bandgap fibers
Eric Numkam Fokoua, Wenwu Zhu, Meng Ding, Zitong Feng, Yong Chen, Thomas D. Bradley, Gregory T. Jasion, David J. Richardson, Francesco Poletti & Radan Slavík, 2021, Journal of Lightwave Technology, 39(7), 2142-2150
DOI: 10.1109/JLT.2020.3043832
Type: article
Towards low loss hollow core optical fibers
Thomas D. Bradley, Gregory T. Jasion, Hesham Sakr, Ian A. Davidson, John R. Hayes, Austin Taranta, Kerrianne Harrington, Eric Numkam Fokoua, Yong Chen, David J. Richardson & Francesco Poletti, 2021
DOI: 10.1117/12.2579577
Type: conference