My research concerns the interaction of light with matter. Light being our primary means of sensing the world around us, means that our control over this fundamental interaction defines a broad applications base. Relevant existing technologies include bio-molecular sensing, optical data communications and data storage. Future and emerging technologies include quantum imaging, metrology, and quantum simulation/computing.
My team’s methodologies all involve squeezing light and matter into small regions of space for as long as possible. Keeping light “still” and localised makes it interact better with matter. E.g., an effective approach is to trap light between two highly reflective mirrors spaced by just a few mm – a microcavity. Such approaches work well for any type of interaction, but weaker, high-order (nonlinear) processes, are enhanced most dramatically. My interests are thus in phenomena such as Raman scattering (sensing and molecular fingerprinting) and non-linear optics (quantum states of light and photonics). A key goal is to make nonlinear effects as strong as linear ones, and exploit them in technologies.
Over the past decade I have been fascinated by metal optics. Metals do not simply reflect light; they also support optical excitations at their surfaces. These surface waves can focus light far smaller than any microscope objective – while the resolving power of a microscope is limited by light’s wavelength, metal nanostructures confine light to scales limited only by our nanofabrication tools! This research area is commonly called “plasmonics”.