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 reseach 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. Other novel areas are investigating VCSEL based wireless-over-fibre systems.
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 through joint appointments in Physics.
The optics group at Bristol comprises 6 academic members of staff: Prof John Rarity, Dr Judy Rorison, Prof Siyuan Yu, Dr Martin Cryan, Prof. Jeremy O’Brien (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 included 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.
The facilities at Bristol include a very well equipped clean room for device fabrication with particularly advanced etching and coating facilities, a focussed 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 Photonic 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 (Photonic Crystals and Wireless-over-Fibre)
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