The University of Southampton

Pulsed Fibre Lasers

This group is part of the Advanced Fibre Technologies & Applications Group led by Prof David J Richardson

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PhD Projects:

Fibre laser technology offers tremendous prospects for the development of compact, robust pulse sources capable of operating over a very wide range of pulse parameters spanning from the microsecond down to the femtosecond regime. 

The ORC has been engaged in pulsed fibre laser development since the first demonstration of fibre lasers in the mid-1980s. Over this period it has produced numerous world first results most notably in the area of high energy Q-switched systems, passively mode-locked lasers, high average power pulsed systems and fibre laser pumped parametric devices.

Spatio-Temporal Beam Tailored Fibre Lasers For Energy Resilient Manufacturing

Supervisor: Prof D J Richardson
Co-supervisors: Prof S U Alam, Dr J Price

Laser based materials processing provides an increasingly important component of the UK manufacturing sector and hence of the national economy. Within this PhD project we seek a ten-fold improvement in the energy efficiency and speed of laser based manufacturing. 

Exploiting the most recent advances in optical fibre communications technology we will develop a new generation of fibre lasers offering unprecedented levels of simultaneous control of the spatial, temporal and polarisation properties of the output beam. This will allow machinists to optimise the laser for particular light:matter interactions and to maximise the efficiency of each pulse in laser-based materials processing for the first time and should ultimately lead to a step-change in manufacturing control and novel low-energy manufacturing processes. 

We will work with our collaborators at the Centre for Ultraprecision as the University of Cambridge to demonstrate the benefits of the new laser in the later phases of the PhD and will also explore other potential applications in medicine and remote sensing amongst others.

Novel Fibre Technologies for Data Centre Applications

Supervisor: Prof D J Richardson
Co-supervisors: Dr M N Petrovich, Prof S U Alam

Connecting the many tens of thousands of servers in the data centres of today is becoming an increasing challenge due to the sheer volume of optical fibres used and the interconnection topologies employed. 

This PhD project is concerned with developing new fibre solutions for ultrahigh density computer interconnection over km scale distances with a view to improved physical connection to the server racks, reducing the latency of data transfer between servers and facilitating efficient signal routing. 

The PhD will run alongside a large European research program (COSIGN project) which is exploring the general issue of next generation data centre design. 

This project will involve close collaboration with leading European players in the data centre area.

Novel Fibre Technologies for Ultra-high Capacity (Petabit/s) Optical Networks

Supervisor: Prof D J Richardson
Co-supervisors: Dr Y Jung, Dr S U Alam

We are rapidly reaching fundamental limits in terms of how much information can be transmitted though the optical fibres used in the networks of today (estimated at between 100-200 Terabit/s per fibre with 100 Terabit/s now demonstrated in the laboratory and 10 Tbit/s in field installed commercial systems). This is limited by a number of factors including loss, cross-talk between channels due to nonlinear optical effects and the bandwidth of the amplifiers used. 

This PhD project is concerned with looking at radical new transmission fibre and amplifier technologies that will allow scaling of capacity to the Petabit/s level. 

The PhD will run alongside a major European/Japanese project (SAFARI) and will investigate the possibility of using multicore fibre to increase the data carrying capacity of optical cable, with a focus on developing an optical amplifier capable of simultaneously boosting the power of the signals independently propagating on each of the individual fibre cores. 

The PhD will involve close collaboration with major industrial partners in both Europe and Japan.

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