Ms Natalie Wheeler

Natalie received the Ph.D. degree from the University of Bath, Bath, U.K., in 2011, on the fabrication and integration of hollow core microstructured optical fibers (HC-MOFs) for use as gas cells in applications including frequency metrology and slow light. In 2010, she started as a Research Fellow in the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) at the University of Southampton, U.K., working on the fabrication of HC-MOFs, initially for telecommunications applications. She has designed and fabricated state-of-the-art HC-MOFs, in terms of loss and bandwidth (both bandgap-guiding and anti-resonant type). These fibres have been used in world-leading transmission experiments, which highlight the potential of HC-MOFs in future high-capacity transmission networks, as well as in novel demonstrations for ultra-high power delivery. She has also led fabrication of HC-MOFs for operation in the mid-IR spectral region and demonstrated an order of magnitude loss reduction compared to previous examples in the literature. She also has a strong interest in gas-filled applications of HC-MOFs and completed the first study into the origin and concentration of gas species that are found in HC-MOFs post-fabrication and, using HC-MOFs for the Mid-IR, published the first realisation of sub-ppm sensitivity in gas-filled HC-MOF.