About the project
We are looking for a PhD student to join our group on a project to numerically model, design, and simulate the next generation of fibre lasers.
Fibre lasers are a superb tool for applications such as laser marking, cutting, welding, and laser surgery, but we are still only beginning to understand all the features they can offer. Scaling to higher laser powers and being able to control the laser beam in space requires us to move away from standard single-mode fibres and to use multimode fibres instead. This brings new challenges in the form of multimode optical nonlinearities and instabilities which we need to understand and control in order to obtain clean, well-behaved laser output.
This project will exploit computer simulations to investigate the dynamics of the generation of light in such large, few-moded or multimoded, optical fibres. We will study the interaction between the laser gain medium and the spatial distribution of the laser light, the instabilities caused by optical nonlinearities, temperature and acoustic fluctuations, and the influence of chromatic dispersion on these processes.
You will join a vibrant laser research team at the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) and work on a recently-funded major new research programme. Your numerical and theoretical investigations will be performed in close collaboration with experimental colleagues at the ORC and with industry collaborators.
If you have an interest in computational physics and research in the exciting area of fibre lasers you would be highly suitable for this project. You will benefit from our world-leading expertise in these fields and our state-of-the-art cleanrooms and laboratories. You will publish research articles and give presentations at international conferences. And you will enjoy work on a PhD project that is highly relevant for the future development of the next generation of fibre lasers and their applications.
