Postgraduate research project

Spatial effects in high-power fibre lasers and amplifiers

Funding
Competition funded View fees and funding
Type of degree
Doctor of Philosophy
Entry requirements
2:1 honours degree View full entry requirements
Faculty graduate school
Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences
Closing date

About the project

We are looking for a PhD student to work on the design and numerical simulation of the next generation of high-power fibre lasers. The project is part of a major new initiative funded by the UK Research Council at the Optoelectronics Research Centre, University of Southampton, that will combine new fibre technology with state-of-the-art control mechanisms, including machine learning, to reach unprecedented laser powers with full control over the beam shape.

 

As fibre lasers get more and more powerful, the fibre core size must increase to minimise optical nonlinearities and avoid material damage. This adds spatial degrees of freedom to the laser beam that have to be controlled in order to obtain a clean, well-behaved laser output. This project will exploit computer simulations to investigate the dynamics of the generation of light in such large, few-mode or multimode, optical fibres. 

We will analyse the dynamics of the spatial light profile and its dependence on the gain medium, fibre losses, optical nonlinearities, chromatic dispersion, and thermal and acoustic effects. These numerical and theoretical investigations will be performed in close collaboration with corresponding high-power laser experiments in our labs and at our industrial partners.

If you have an interest in computational physics and research in the exciting area of high-power lasers, you would be highly suitable for this project. You will benefit from our world-leading expertise in these fields and exploit state-of-the-art computer hardware for your research on a PhD project which is highly relevant for the future development of the next generation of fibre lasers and their applications in, for example, advanced digital manufacturing and medical surgery.