PAIR Distinguished Lecture by Prof. Philip RUSSELL (5 Nov 2024)

Topic: Three decades riding the photonic crystal fibre wave

Abstract:
In 1991 Prof. Philip RUSSEL proposed that a glass fibre with a periodic array of microscopic hollow channels running along its length might guide light in novel ways. The first light-guiding photonic crystal fibre (PCF) emerged from the drawing tower in late 1995. By offering enhanced control over the propagation of light, PCF has led to a whole series of scientific breakthroughs. Solid-core versions are being used to transform invisible infrared laser pulses into white light millions of times brighter than the sun. Hollow core PCF filled with gas is being used to compress laser pulses to single-cycle durations, and create novel sources of bright wavelength-tuneable ultraviolet light. When chirally twisted, PCF supports optical vortices with fascinating properties. In the lecture PROF. PHILIP RUSSEL will look back over the last three decades, and review how some of the scientific discoveries made possible by PCF have evolved into real-world applications.


Biography:
Prof. Philip Russell obtained his doctorate in 1979 at the University of Oxford, thereafter working at the universities of Hamburg-Harburg, Nice, Southampton, Kent and Bath, as well as at the IBM Watson Research Center in New York. From October 2005 to March 2021 he held the Krupp Chair in Experimental Physics at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, and in 2009 he co-founded the Max-Planck Institute for the Science of Light (MPL). In June 2016 he received an honorary doctorate from the Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo in Santander, Spain. Following his retirement as MPL director, in April 2024 he became scientific director of the RCALS Centre for Advanced Lightwave Science in Hangzhou, China. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and Optica (formerly The Optical Society, OSA), a Foreign Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and has won a number of awards including the 2000 OSA Joseph Fraunhofer Award/Robert M. Burley Prize, the 2002 Applied Optics Division Prize and the 2005 Thomas Young Prize of the Institute of Physics (London), the 2005 Körber Prize for European Science, the 2013 EPS Prize for Research into the Science of Light, the 2014 Berthold Leibinger Zukunftspreis, the 2015 IEEE Photonics Award and the 2018 Rank Prize for Optoelectronics. He was OSA's President in 2015, the International Year of Light.

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