Setting standards. Making technologies.

Today I visited NIST, the USA’s National Institute of Standards and Technologies. I had an incredibly interesting day visiting groups and labs in their Applied Physics Division with is part of the Physical Measurements Laboratory. I got to present my research work again, and got loads of really interesting questions. Thanks to Thomas Gerrits for hosting.

This is the place where they are setting measurement standards. Let me illustrate this. NIST are part of a project that over the next 2 years with 11 other institutions worldwide will aim to set a standard on how to measure single photons. Yes, we can detect single photons. And they are addressing how to set a standard to measure these, because that’s a problem that researchers and companies want to solve to improve sensing techniques and how to process information.

It’s humbling to walk through corridors where Nobel laureates have worked. This is the closest I’ve ever been to (a duplicate of!) a Nobel medal.

David Wineland was awarded the 2012 Nobel prize in Physics enabling "ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems" — David Wineland was awarded the 2012 Nobel prize in Physics enabling “ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems”

For the first time I walked through an experiment. The size of this experiment was hundreds of meters. I was walking 5 minutes through a corridor, following a trail of fibre optics. This is the size of what is needed to check that your experiment is behaving like quantum theory predicts. This experiment was using today’s technologies to test theories that were thought of 50 years ago.

And then here I am, drawing up experiments that we would like to be able to do in a fibre or on a chip. I’m sharing this, and not saying any more; the comments section is open for questions.

Open for ideas about which technology would be best to build this.

West Canadian Highlights

I’m leaving Canada and felt like I should reflect on the highlights from this first stage.

Presenting at an international conference and doing outreach there was great. Super pleased with the quality of the talks I heard and discussions I had. My talk was recorded by the Optical Society as an added bonus, although with restricted access to members.

Presenting my research at the OSA Advanced Photonics at the Fairmont Hotel in Vancouver

Driving through British Columbia and Alberta is a must if you like a road trip. The scenery was beautiful; I hoped you enjoyed the pictures! I should have set up a selfie booth in the car to capture the moments shared on the road with Anna, Peter, Flintstone, Tim, Xavier and Diana.

Tim Cline (left), travel companion and host in Revelstoke

Kelowna was an awesome place. The cycling was amazing, and the atmosphere of the town super friendly. Eternally grateful to Tim for letting me crash at his for a few days. On my list of places to check out in winter.

Giving a talk on my research and life as a PhD student in Southampton for the University of Calgary’s Student Optics and Photonics Society was a great experience, as was the added bonus of visiting loads of cool research labs.

Presenting my work on integrated polarising couplers.

Finally, there were some unexpected reunions along the way. Great to catch up with Shanghai-Fudan-buddy Wayne and his girlfriend Louise in Vancouver, and bump into Eleonora and Federico from the Grenoble Nanotechnology Class of 2013 in Vancouver and Banff!

Unexpected catch-up in downtown Vancouver with Wayne, a friend from my time in Shanghai in 2008

Next up is Boulder, Colorado in the USA. Thanks for reading. Watch this space for more research and adventures.

Meeting the COPSS

I made it to Calgary. It was a fantastic road trip. The last few days of it were spent between mountains, lakes and my laptop, enjoying the views and preparing a presentation for a seminar at the University of Calgary for its Optics and Photonics Society (COPSS) . COPSS are excellent hosts, and all pictures herein at courtesy of Linhui Yu.

My talk was on my research and life as a PhD student in the University of Southampton’s Optoelectronics Research Centre. The audience was really engaging, and had lots of questions for me. We talked about my experience as a student in Southampton, and I presented some of the work that I’ve done as President of Southampton’s Optics and Photonics Society.

I run a small workshop using the outreach kit that I am travelling with. Part of the kit features samples to explain the research that we do in Southampton, that are made with the fabrication tools that are available in Southampton. In this picture I am talking about a hollow-core fibre preform that was 3D printed by Lieke van Putten as part of her PhD research.

Demonstrating examples of kit that I use to teach about optoelectronics science and research. I'm holding a 3D printed hollow-core fibre preform made by Lieke Van Putten. — Demonstrating examples of kit that I use to teach about optoelectronics science and research. I’m holding a 3D printed hollow-core fibre preform made by Lieke Van Putten.

I had the chance to visit research labs. There’s some really cool work going on in the Electrical Engineering department for developing new systems for the optical imaging of the brain.

I also visited 3 labs in the physics departments, where they were doing some mind-blowing quantum physics experiments, including, but not limited to, magneto-optical trapping (Alexander Lvosky, and team), quantum repeaters for long-haul telecommunications systems (Wolfgang Tittel, and team), and nanoscale optomechanics (Paul Barclay, and team).

A big thanks to Chris Healey for facilitating my visit through the physics department.

Finally, a bit of science. I really like this picture. It was taken through diffraction glasses. These are sheets of plastic with 1000s of parallel lines that split all of the colours of light by diffraction. I’ve handed out hundreds of these glasses in science fairs, exhibitions, garden shows, etc. and people love them! They are really useful to grab people’s attention and serve as a great ice-breaker at the start of any conversation.

Life is colourful if you look at it through diffraction glasses!

Alberta

Lake Louise from the Big Beehive viewpoint

British Columbia

Welcome to the gallery of my road trip through British Columbia. Great driving. Enjoy the view!

University of British Columbia Botanical Gardens

Revelstoke, with Mt Bigby in the background

Flowers and silicon

On my last day in Vancouver, I visited the University of British Columbia (UBC). Through the SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, I was able to reach out to students of the SPIE UBC student chapter and arrange to visit UBC. A lot of people are away for the summer, but I had the pleasure of having a short meeting with Edison.

Edison is working in silicon photonics and making devices that are 10-100s nanometers (1,000 to 10,000 smaller than the width of your hair!) and that use light to detect molecules, and in particular certain types of pesticides. It was fascinating visiting his labs where he can prepare the chemistry and do the optical experiments.

UBC has a lovely campus. It’s so big that I had to drive around it to take it all in. Here’s what I guess the campus centre looks like.

There’s also a botanical garden on campus, with lots of trails. It’s a very relaxing place, with lots of walks through shaded areas and many beautiful flowers.

Road trip

I’ve got a car and, finally, I have a plan on where to take it.

I’m off to Banff, and then Calgary. Thanks to a very helpful lady in the Vancouver Tourist Information Centre, I also have the tools to get me there. I’ve cut out some maps, and found some campsites, that will take me to the

Squamish, the Canadian response to Yosemite
Whistler, world-renowned skiing (and good summer hiking too!)
Merritt and Kelowna down in the Okanagan wine valley
Revelstoke, on a recommendation from top lad Henners Nixon
Banff National Park, including Lake Louise.

That’s about 1,164 km in total that I have to do in the next 8 days. It’s going to be busy and the drive of a lifetime. Watch this space!

"Home" for the next 10 days — “Home” for the next 10 days

Conference Outreach

Don’t ask don’t get

I have in my possession a portable outreach education kit named TS Squared: Teaching Students to Teach Students.

It fits in a back pack, weighs less than 2.5 kg and is going to go on tour with me around universities in Canada and the USA.

In this box you will find hands-on experiments and visually exciting demonstrations on the subjects of photonics and electronics: mirrors, colours, EM spectrum and telecommunications. These are accessible to students who are not specialist in the subject area, and will enable them to understand and teach the fundamentals to younger students or peers.

The box also contains samples of the research that is carried out at the Optoelectronics Research Centre in Southampton. This is where I get to talk about my work on Integrated Photonics and my upcoming presentation, and grow the number of potential attendees!

We have sample give-aways (more on this in a bit) to give people ideas and explain how we can use different gifts to measure the quality of our engagement. Business cards are for business, diffraction gratings for a meaningful scientific interaction, and quantum key rings for something really special!

Back to the original quote then. I asked the conference organisers if we could display this kit, and they gratefully accepted my request and put me up in the conference exhibition hall.

The Ligthwave Roadshow on world tour, here in Vancouver, Canada.

It has been an enriching experience. I’ve enjoyed working with fellow-PHD student Miranda Turvey on the exhibit, and telling 8 research students, 3 conference organisers, 2 friends visiting Vancouver, 6 world-leading researchers and 3 members from industry about the outreach & public engagement of my research that I do, imparting some new scientific or practical knowledge on how I do my outreach. The table has also brought together 12 researchers from the Optoelectronics Research Centre and Gregory Quarles, the OSA’s chief scientist.

Researchers from the ORC at IPR Vancouver 2016

There’s a sour note to all this though. Today, 5 of our display items went missing*. People may have assumed that anything left out was fair game to take. Absolutely gutted that I’m missing these, but the show will go on.

Because it does. Today, I’ve had coffee to discuss potential outreach projects with Cloud State University, Minnesotta, discussing with universities in the USA and Canada to present the kit to the chapters, and learning exciting new stuff at this incredible conference.

* Update 21/07: the items have been retrieved and the show will go on!

Time to fly

I’m off to North America for 7 weeks. From today I will be in Canada and the USA and I will be back in the UK on 3rd September. During that time, I will be going to 2 international conferences

OSA Integrated Photonics Research in Vancouver, presenting my latest research results. See my previous post for more on this.
SPIE Optics + Photonics, where I will be attending a student leadership workshop, an Outreach Olympic Games and presenting two papers at the Optics Outreach and Education conference on my outreach and public engagement with research work that I carried out during the UNESCO 2015 International Year of Light.

In between, I will be travelling to different places in Canada and the USA to visit universities and companies, network with researchers and students, and tie in with family and friends. Here’s what the trip is going to look like. If you are near any of these areas, and I haven’t fixed a date to meet you, please get in touch!

When?	Where?
16/07-21/07	Vancouver
21/07-30/07	British Columbia, Alberta
30/07-02/08	Calgary
02/08-12/08	Boulder, CO
12/08-14/08	Toronto
14/08-19/08	Montreal
19/08-23/08	San Francisco and Bay Area, CA
23/08-26/08	LA, CA
26/08-02/09	San Diego, CA
03/09	Back to the UK

Watch this space for news and photos on my research, visits, travels, reunions and adventures.

Integrated Photonics Research

Eureka. I made an experiment, and then made it better.

In my PhD I am building integrated optical circuits. The devices I have been making act as polarising filters: they split a light signal into 2 signals that have different amounts of polarisation in each of them. It’s a bit like with polarised sunglasses, where held one way (say horizontally) the light coming through looks strong, and when turned at a right angle, the light looks weak. My devices have the same effect, and I want to quantify this contrast in the strengths of the polarised light with physical quantities.

So this is how I did it

Integrated photonics experiments are delicate — My integrated photonics experiment

Now the tricky thing with this experiment is that am trying to measure the polarisation contrast within a tiny ray of light that is very close to a huge sun that is a source of unwanted noise. The higher the noise the harder it is to measure a high level of polarisation contrast at the device output. It works on a scale of 1 to 100 (in dBs for those familiar with logarithmic scales). Said differently, without taking care, my device looks like it’s on level 5. If I collect the data by filtering out the noise then I can show a higher level of contrast. I used a combination of fibre optics, microscope objectives, highly precise mechanical stages and filters to try and make it better.

It’s a bit like playing Pokemon. I was at level 17 initially, worked hard to improve an experiment and after some time got to level 28. That’s a 10 billion (10^10!) fold improvement in contrast. Next step is level 30; at that point my device evolves from a research product to a device worthy of industrial interest.