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Research project

Airguide Photonics

Project overview

Optical fibres lie at the heart of our increasingly technological society. For example, they support the internet and mobile communications that we all now take for granted, they save lives through medical diagnosis and interventions using fibre-optic endoscopes, and they enable the mass production of a huge array of commercial products through fibre laser based materials processing.

Within our Airguide Photonics research programme we aim to translate Hollow Core Fibre (HCF) technology from the research lab to a deployable fibre technology, unleashing innovative applications across a broad range of science and engineering fields.

“The ORC has been pioneering the development of fibre optics and advancing communications technology for many years and has an impressive record of using research funding to collaborate with academic and industry partners. The AirGuide Photonics programme promises to push at the boundaries once more. We are confident that the research will uncover more discoveries and lead to world-leading innovations.”
Professor Tom Rodden - Deputy Chief Executive of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)

Staff

Lead researchers

Professor David Richardson FREng, FRS

Research interests
  • Hollow Core Optical Fibres
  • Optical Communications
  • High Power Fibre Lasers
Connect with David

Email: djr@orc.soton.ac.uk

Other researchers

Professor Sir David Payne KBE CBE FRS FREng

Professor of Photonics
Research interests
  • high-power fibre lasers
  • spun fibres for control of dispersion, now extensively used in undersea fibre cables
  • the Er/Yb cladding-pumped fibre amplifier used for cable television distribution
Connect with Sir David

Email: dnp@orc.soton.ac.uk

Professor Jayanta Sahu

Professorial Fellow-Research
Connect with Jayanta

Email: jks@orc.soton.ac.uk

Professor Periklis Petropoulos

Professor
Research interests
  • Optical communications,
  • All-optical signal processing,
  • Novel fibre and waveguide technologies
Connect with Periklis

Email: pp@orc.soton.ac.uk

Professor Radan Slavik

Professorial Fellow-Research
Research interests
  • In recent years, there have been significant developments in lightwave technologies enabling wide exploitation of optical phase, as exemplified in particular by the dawn of Coherent Optical Communications - the key enabler for the growth in the capacity of the Internet. This is due to many key breakthroughs in laser technology (low-noise low-cost and compact lasers), new revolutionary concepts that have recently  been introduced (e.g., the Optical Frequency Comb, the significance of which was demonstrated by the award of a Nobel Prize in 2005), and significant advances in electronics that, thanks to the increased speeds now possible, can accommodate the processing of very complicated coherent (amplitude + phase) signals.
  • Another exciting field is Hollow Core Optical fibres, which guides ligth in a central hole surrounded by a microstructure that prevents light escaping from the core. Although known for over 20 years, only very recently their fabrication enabled them to use their full potential. 
Connect with Radan

Email: R.Slavik@soton.ac.uk

Professor Francesco Poletti

Professorial Fellow-Research
Research interests
  • Hollow Core Optical Fibres: design and fabrication
  • Optical Communications: high capacity and low latency
  • Novel active and passive optical fibres
Connect with Francesco

Email: frap@orc.soton.ac.uk

Collaborating research institutes, centres and groups

Research outputs

Tunable lasers phaselocked to Optical Frequency Comb
Win Indra, Zitong Feng, Meng Ding, Josef Vojtěch & Radan Slavík, 2025, Journal of Lightwave Technology, 43(10), 4833-4839
DOI: 10.1109/JLT.2025.3540298
Type: article
Distributed measurement and modified Navier-Stokes model of gas pressure profile evolution in hollow-core antiresonant fibres
Elizaveta Elistratova, Thomas W. Kelly, Ian A. Davidson, Hesham Sakr, Thomas D. Bradley, Austin Taranta, Francesco Poletti, Radan Slavík, Peter Horak, Natalie V. Wheeler & Austin Acker Taranta, 2024, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics, 30(6), 1-10
DOI: 10.1109/JSTQE.2024.3397456
Type: article
Microlens hollow-core fiber probes for operando raman spectroscopy
Mega J. Groom, Ermanno Miele, Jonathan Pinnell, Matthew G. Ellis, Jessica B. McConnell, Hesham Sakr, Gregory Jasion, Ian Davidson, Natalie Wheeler, Yongmin Jung, Francesco Poletti, Svetlana Menkin, Marlous Kamp, Jeremy J. Baumberg & Tijmen G. Euser, 2024, ACS Photonics, 11(8), 3167-3177
DOI: 10.1021/acsphotonics.4c00525
Type: article
Splicing hollow core fiber with standard glass-core fiber with ultralow back-reflection and low coupling loss
Bo Shi, Cong Zhang, Thomas Kelly, Xuhao Wei, Meng Ding, Meng Huang, Songnian Fu, Francesco Poletti & Radan Slavík, 2024, ACS Photonics, 11(8), 3288–3295
DOI: 10.1021/acsphotonics.4c00677
Type: article
Power Over Fiber and Analog Radio Over Fiber Simultaneous Transmission Over Long Distance in Single Mode, Multicore, and Hollow Core Fibers
Ruben Altuna, Yongmin Jung, Periklis Petropoulos & Carmen Vazquez, 2024, Laser & Photonics Reviews, 18(8)
DOI: 10.1002/lpor.202400157
Type: article
Single-cell high-precision ablation using nanosecond-pulsed thulium-doped fiber laser
Matthew D. Gerard, Hiroki Marius Oswald Cook, James A. Read, Ibrahim H. Abughazaleh, Panuwat Srisamran, Siddhi Chugh, Sijing Liang, Qiang Fu, Richard O.C. Oreffo, David J. Richardson, Sumeet Mahajan & Lin Xu, 2024, Optical Engineering, 63(8)
DOI: 10.1117/1.OE.63.8.086102
Type: article
Double-clad antiresonant hollow-core fiber and its comparison with other fibers for multiphoton micro-endoscopy
Marzanna Szwaj, Ian A. Davidson, Peter B. Johnson, Greg Jasion, Yongmin Jung, Seyed Reza Sandoghchi, Krzysztof P. Herdzik, Konstantinos N. Bourdakos, Natalie V. Wheeler, Hans Christian Mulvad, David J. Richardson, Francesco Poletti & Sumeet Mahajan, 2024, Sensors, 24(8)
DOI: 10.3390/s24082482
Type: article