We conduct a world-leading research activity on fibre and all-solid-state lasers developed for many real-world applications from precision laser manufacturing, remote sensing through to medical imaging and therapeutics.
Fibre Lasers
This activity is currently focused on development of compact and high power fibre laser sources, engineered to create new wavelengths and ultrashort pulse formats including: super-continuum generation in photonic crystal fibres; visible fibre sources by Raman or parametric conversion of IR fibre-lasers; near and mid-infrared sources based on novel Bismuth and Thulium-doped fibre lasers; ultrashort pulse generation using carbon nanotubes or graphene as ‘universal’ saturable absorbers that can operate across all wavelength regions.
Diode-Pumped Solid-State Lasers
This activity develops all-solid-state lasers and nonlinear optical technologies to provide efficient sources of high energy pulses including: diode-pumped micro-slab lasers (commercialised by Mike Damzen’s spin-out company, Midaz Lasers Ltd); world-leading diode-pumped Alexandrite lasers, supported by the European Space Agency (ESA) for next-generation satellite-based remote sensing and future femtosecond laser applications; and resilient “self-organising” lasers based on dynamic nonlinear optical holography that self-correct for thermally-induced aberrations in high power lasers
Research sub-groups