P&OED MSc Course Structure
Registration
St Andrews and Heriot-Watt Universities act alternately as lead partners, to whom potential students should apply. The lead partner for the 2012-13 course will be St Andrews. However, students are registered at both Universities and successful student receive a degree jointly from the two universities.
Duration
The course lasts twelve months, starting around the end of September. Lectures in the universities take place from September to May inclusive. There is a project (usually in industry) from mid-May to August inclusive. There are two vacations, at Christmas and Easter. In September the project dissertation is examined and there is an oral examination.
Organisation
Teaching comprises lecture modules, tutorials, and laboratory work. Students move their accommodation from St Andrews to Heriot-Watt university part way through the teaching session (near the start of February).
Students are also expected to attend relevant research seminars and departmental colloquia which are held regularly, and which reflect the research interests of the physics departments in St Andrews and Heriot-Watt. Seminars and Colloquia are given by departmental research staff, specialists from other universities and specialists from industry.
Assessment
Work for lecture modules is assessed largely through examinations whereas the laboratory work is assessed in a continuous manner. Lecture courses are examined at the end of each teaching block.
The project placement which occupies 12-14 weeks within late May, June, July and August is assessed in September after the submission of a dissertation and an oral exam.
Course and Syllabus
Semester One in St Andrews
Lasers
This module presents a basic description of the main physical concepts upon which an understanding of laser materials, operations and applications can be based, and develops the mathematical tools to allow quantitative work to be done in this area. Two industrial lectures will show how some of these concepts are applied in commercial systems, and design skills are developed through assignments in this area. Information retrieval, communication skills, research skills, and critical thinking are developed through the design assignment and the production of work on a given topic, and related preparatory work. Photonics simulation software is used to give experience with such tools and to allow the exploration of problems beyond those that can be solved analytically. Some of the concepts can be explored further in the photonics laboratory module.
The syllabus includes: basic concepts of energy-level manifolds in gain media, particularly in respect of population inversion and saturation effects; conditions for oscillator stability in laser resonator configurations and transverse and longitudinal cavity mode descriptions; single longitudinal mode operation for spectral purity and phase locking of longitudinal modes for the generation of periodic sequences of intense ultrashort pulses (i.e. laser modelocking); illustrations of line-narrowed and modelocked lasers and the origin and exploitability of intensity-induced optical effects.
Transient/dynamic behaviour of laser oscillators including relaxation oscillations, amplitude and phase modulation, frequency switching, Q-switching, cavity dumping and mode locking; design analysis of optically-pumped solid state lasers; laser amplifiers including continuous-wave, pulsed and regenerative amplification; dispersion and gain in a laser oscillator-role of the macroscopic polarisation; unstable optical resonators, tunable lasers.
Displays and Nonlinear Optics
The subject content of this module includes:-
Concepts of optoelectronic display devices. Semiconducting polymers - photoluminescence and electroluminescence. Factors determining efficiency; light-emitting diodes and field effect transistors. Liquid crystals - nematic, smectic and cholosteric phases; director and order-parameter; operation of twisted nematic display.
Phenomenological theory of nonlinearities. Optics of anisotropic media. Harmonic generation, mixing and parametric effects. Two-photon absorption, saturated absorption and nonlinear refraction. Rayleigh, Brillouin and Raman scattering. Self-focusing and self-phase-modulation. Self-induced transparency. Solitons. Optical switching. Electro-optic effect and acousto-optic effects. Electro-optic and acousto-optic modulators. optical techniques for terahertz generation
Tutorial questions and discussions will help students develop the ability to use this material in optoelectronics, and some aspects will be used in the teaching laboratory. Industrial lecture(s) and/or input from the local research group in the displays area will give a commercial/research perspective, and will be the catalyst for some independent research of a topic to be presented as a short briefing paper. This will build upon some of the skill development noted under the lasers module.
Photonics Applications
Students choose two out of three of the following half-module topics:_
Laser cooled atoms and quantum gases
This half-module will explore the use of laser light to reduce the mechanical motion of atoms: so termed laser cooling. Sub-Doppler cooling , creation of magneto-optical traps will be described. This will then be followed by uses of cold atoms in QM experiments and more practical studies such as atomic clocks and spectroscopy. The course will then progress to how to use a laser cooled cloud to reach quantum degeneracy for bosons (BEC) and the cooing of fermi gases by the method of evaporative cooling. Applications such as matter-wave interferometry and the Mott Insulator transition will be discussed
Photonic Crystals and Plasmonics
Nanostructured materials such as photonic crystals or plasmonic metamaterials are very hot topics in contemporary photonics. The fascination arises from the fact that the properties of these materials can be designed to a significant extent via their structure. While photonic crystals are made of dielectric materials, plasmonic structures are typically made of metals. Many of the properties of these nanostructured materials can be understood from their dispersion diagram or optical bandstructure, which is a core tool that will be explored in the course. Familiar concepts such as multilayer mirrors and interference effects will be used to explain the more complex features such as slow light propagation and high Q cavities in photonic crystal waveguides, supercontinuum generation in photonic crystal fibres, or superlensing and optical cloaking in plasmonic metamaterials.
Biophotonics
The course will expose students to the exciting opportunities offered by applying photonics methods and technology to biomedical sensing and detection. A rudimentary biological background will be provided where needed. Topics include different microscopy techniques employed in biophotonics research, such as fluorescence microscopy and confocal microscopy, as well as related techniques such as optical coherence tomography (OCT) and two-photon effects. The course covers a number of optical detection methods, based e.g. on fluorescence and interferometry, as well as the basics of biochemical sensitisation and tagging. The course will be taught as lectures, including guest lectures by specialists, as well as problem-solving exercises, including a short critique of a contemporary biophotonics research paper.
Independent of the choice of two topics, this module will contain a literature search and short oral presentation on a photonics application chosen from a list provided by the teaching staff on the three topics, with support arranged by the programme coordinator using tutors etc. This to include Web of Science, example talks, and discussions.
Photonics Laboratory 1
The well-equipped photonics teaching laboratories at the two sites give students a range of useful practical experience. Students spend three afternoons a week in these labs. The module in St Andrews starts with some introductory work in small groups. Students then work independently on open-ended photonics investigation experiments. In student evaluations the practical work is usually one of the most appreciated parts of the programme.
Semester
Two in Heriot-Watt
Semiconductor Optoelectronics
Semiconductor physics – Fermi Level, density of states, doping, recombination mechanisms, pn junction. Light Emitting Diodes. Laser diodes: rate equations, operational characteristics, modulation. Specialised laser diodes – multiple quantum well, quantum dot, distributed feedback, VCSELs.
Photoemissive detectors and photomultipliers. Semiconductor photodetectors: Schottky, pn, p-i-n photodiodes, and avalanche photodiodes. Noise in semiconductor detectors and amplifiers.
Modern Optics
The syllabus is equally split into 3 components:
Geometrical Optics : Ray sketching, y-u trace, y-nu trace, cardinal points of lens, chromatic aberrations, third-order aberrations, analysis of optical systems, aberration correction techniques.
Fourier Optics : Fourier Analysis, Convolution Theory, Fourier transforming in lens systems, Frequency analysis of imaging systems, Coherent and incoherent imaging, Spatial filtering and optical information processing.
Modulators : Crystal optics, Electro-optic effect, Acousto-optic effect; application of these effects in optical modulators.
Fibre-Optic Communications
Fibre optic attenuation: modal effects; absorption; scattering, Fibre optic dispersion, Fibre optic refractive index profile, Chirp, dispersion management. Numerical aperture. Optical time domain reflectometry. Optical transmitters. Optical receivers. Fibre amplifiers: EDFA, PDFA & Raman. Digital systems. Analogue systems. Coherent systems. Public communication network. WDM and Filters: dielectric, AWG and fibre grating devices Nonlinear fibres: SPM, CPM, MI, FWM, SBS, SRS.
Photonics Lab Two
The teaching laboratory runs on three afternoons a week, and aims to develop further students' skills in experimental design, exploration of physical concepts, and experimental skills.
Summer Project
Students who achieve sufficiently well in the first two semesters may progress to the 3.5-month summer project. This is most often undertaken in a company within the UK, and involves a major project in research/development of photonics relevance. This work is written up into a dissertation.
BDS 6.11
