New services such as broadband to every home streaming video and films on demand will dramatically increase the bandwidth required in our data and telecommunications networks. Optical fibre communications forms the backbone of all land based communications and as the bandwidth increases we require faster devices, switches and new systems concepts. Bristol research is contributing to this ever increasing requirement for bandwidth and flexibility through research into optical switch technology, wavelength conversion, high speed modulation, data regeneration and novel semiconductor lasers. We have the capability of testing systems at modulation speeds up to 40 Gb/s and with methods of aggregating channels to achieve throughput in excess of 1Tb/s over single fibres.
The group is active in Solar Energy research and has a fully equipped solar cell lab with a solar simulator for recreating sunlight conditions in the lab and I-V curve tracer for characterising the efficiency of solar cells. We are interested in a number of emerging solar cell technologies such as Quantum Dot and Solar thermionic devices and are using advanced semiconductor physics and electromagnetic modelling tools to improve the efficiency of next generation devices. The group is also involved in the University theme on Electronic and Photonic Materials and Prof Rorison is the Electrical and Electronic Engineering representative.
Looking further to the future we expect to see the principle features of quantum mechanics, those of wave-particle duality and entanglement, being exploited in computing and communications. Already we have developed secure key exchange schemes based on single photon communications. Such schemes could revolutionise how we secure our communications and financial transactions on an increasingly insecure internet. Bristol is now a world leader in this new field of Quantum Photonics with key successes in developing photonic crystal fibre light sources, quantum secured optical communications and novel quantum gate technologies. The work is linked into a wider University research effort through links with the Nanoscience and Quantum Information Research Theme and with the Centre for Quantum Photonics.
The optics group at Bristol comprises 8 academic members of staff: Prof John Rarity, Prof Judy Rorison, Prof Siyuan Yu, Dr Martin Cryan, Prof. Jeremy O’Brien (joint with Physics), Dr Ruth Oulton(joint with Physics), Dr Mark Thompson(joint with Physics) and Dr Peter Heard (joint with Interface analysis centre). We are currently supporting 10 RA's and around 20 PhD students with a multi-million pound grant income. The research is funded by EPSRC, EU and industry collaborations including QinetiQ, Hewlett Packerd, Kodak, Agilent Technologies, Nortel Networks and Bookham. Bristol is a member of the EPSRC interdisciplinary research collaboration on Quantum Information processing (QIPC IRC), and EU FP6 projects QAP, SECOQC, MUFINS, EQUIND, ACDET. It is coordinator of EU programme IOLOS and the COST288 photonics network (COST 288).
The research in the group covers the following three areas.
A list of current and past member of the Photonics Group
We hold bi-weekly group seminars given by PhD students, Post Docs and Academics. Here is a list of recent and future talks. (internal wiki link here).
You can find details of quantum information talks on the Centre for Quantum Photonics website
The facilities at Bristol include a very well equipped clean room for device fabrication with particularly advanced etching and coating facilities, a focused ion beam etching (FIBE) machine (resolution 7nm), advanced measurement and experimental kit (for both edge-emitting and vertical cavity surface, emitting lasers in particular).
State of the art equipment for optical communications test and measurements include
We have alspo expanded the fundamental research facilities particularly in the Quantum Photonics area. Three laboratories have been fully equipped for photonic quantum information experiments including:
The group makes full use of the excellent university computing facilities including the new high performance computing cluster. The Photonics group recently refurbished 8 laboratories and the clean room. A new electron microscope with basic e-beam lithography was installed in 2007.
Conferences and Meetings Organised by the Group
Prof. John Rarity (Quantum Information, Head of Group)
Prof. Jeremy O’Brien (Quantum Information, joint with Physics))
Prof Siyuan Yu (Optical Devices and Communications)
Dr Judy Rorison (Semiconductor Materials and Devices
Dr Martin Cryan (Nanophotonics, Photonic Crystals)
Dr Ruth Oulton(Quantum Dots, Quantum Information)
Dr Mark Thompson(Integrated Quantum Photonics, Semiconductor lasers)
Honorary Professor: Prof Geoffrey Nash (Mid IR sources and devices)
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
University of Bristol
Woodland Road
Bristol BS8 1UB
Tel: +44 (0) 117 954 5646
Fax: +44 (0)117 954 5206
E-mail: elec-eng@bristol.ac.uk
http:// www.bris.ac.uk/eeng
