About the project
This PhD project, which comes with an enhanced stipend, will focus on advancing active optical fibres design, fabrication, and material properties and developing specialised coatings to achieve excellent laser efficiency and superior beam quality, mitigate detrimental non-linear effects and transverse mode instability for power scaling of fibre lasers and amplifiers.
Are you passionate about developing novel research and keen to shape the future of fibre laser-based energy transfer technologies? The Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC), University of Southampton is recruiting a motivated PhD candidate within the EPSRC Energy Transfer Technologies Doctoral Training Hub. The project is also co-funded by Fibercore, a leading manufacturer of specialty optical fibres in the UK.
Fibre lasers that are increasingly becoming the light sources of choice for a wide range of industrial, scientific, and directed energy applications, are driving the development of new types of fibres, each with a unique set of properties to match with the specific applications.
In this PhD project, we will advance the design, fabrication, and material properties of rare-earth (i.e., Ytterbium (Yb), Erbium (Er), Thulium (Tm), and Holmium (Ho)) doped fibres with large-core and tailored dopant profiles that are capable of delivering excellent laser efficiency, superior beam quality, and effectively suppress the detrimental non-linear effects that can limit the output power of high-power fibre lasers (HPFLs).
In addition, we will implement special fibre coatings for efficient thermal management to enhance the robustness and reliability of HPFls.
The main objectives of this project are:
- explore novel core compositions in optical fibres and advance fibre fabrication techniques to drive innovation in rare-earth doped fibres;
- spectroscopic characterization and realization of high-power lasers of fabricated fibres.
You will gain expertise in specialty optical fibre fabrication and characterization, while expanding your knowledge in high power fibre devices.
Throughout the PhD, you will access state-of-the-art fibre fabrication facilities and laboratories at the ORC and have the opportunity to work with the industrial partner.
The majority of the research will take place at the Optoelectronics Research Centre, University of Southampton, Highfield Campus.
The student will also have the opportunity to spend some time with the industrial partner, Fibercore, based in Southampton.
