About the project
In collaboration with NKT Photonics, there is now an opening for a PhD student to research advanced fibre amplifiers and beam combination concepts within this ground-breaking programme. Research topics include low-noise fibre amplifiers and phase control, fibre nonlinearities and their mitigation, and polarisation management in challenging fibre systems.
‘Smart’ phased-array lasers based on computer-controlled coherently combined optical fibre amplifiers promise to revolutionise materials processing and other important laser applications. Fundamentally, their advantages derive from rapid and flexible control of the beam shape and polarisation. Adding to this, computer control (notably through neural networks and machine learning) is now emerging as a means both to implement and to optimise the control.
The Smart Fibre Optics High-Power Photonics (HiPPo) programme is a new £6 million EPSRC funded 5-year programme pursuing fibre-based phased-array lasers at the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC).
You will work together with a world-leading team with state-of-the-art high-power fibre amplifiers from NKT Photonics and/or amplifiers that you design and build with fibres fabricated in-house in ORC’s state-of-the-art cleanrooms and laboratories.
Some of the work may be performed at NKT Photonics in Hamble (within commuting distance).
If you are seeking an industrially relevant PhD project experimentally focused on fibre lasers and phased arrays with electronic and computer/neural network control then this opportunity is perfect for you.
