About the project
This project combines state of the art optical fibre laser amplifiers with machine learning control to produce next-generation lasers. These “smart” phased-array lasers promise to revolutionise materials processing and other important near-term and futuristic laser applications, including even starship propulsion.
This modular and scalable approach offers rapid and flexible, unsurpassed, control of the beam shape and polarisation. Adding to this, computer control through neural networks and machine learning is now emerging as a means both to implement and to optimise the control offering a new range of capabilities in this rapidly developing field.
The Smart Fibre Optics High-Power Photonics (HiPPo) programme is a £6 million EPSRC funded 5-year programme pursuing fibre-based phased-array lasers at the Optoelectronics Research Centre, University of Southampton. See Smart Fibre Optics High-Power Photonics (HiPPo) , and Optoelectronics Research Centre. We are now seeking a PhD student to research advanced fibre amplifiers and beam combination concepts within this ground-breaking programme at the interface of physics and engineering.
The general research area is laser physics & engineering, and specifically the building blocks and control needed for a phased-array laser. This involves fibre amplifiers with reduced noise, phase & polarisation control, as well as fibre nonlinearities and their mitigation in fibre laser systems at high intensities. The control schemes will be developed and implemented with the assistance of machine learning specialists.
