Practical Photonics

Learning Outcomes

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• Discuss a range of experimental measurement techniques in laser science.

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Acquire practical experience of a number of key topics in laser science.

A range of experiments is available to the students, which cover many of the major topics of modern optics. The actual experiments change with developments in the subject area. Typical experiment titles from previous years have included.

The experiments include Faraday Effect, Electro-Optic Effect and Modulation of Laser Light, Liquid Crystals, Fabry-Pérot Interferometer, Optical Transforms and Spatial Filtering, Second Harmonic Generation, Crystal Optics and anisotropy.

The students will work on each experiment for 3 x 3 hour sessions in the lab and they will spend time at home to analyse their results and understand the underlying physics.

Typical dissertation topics from previous years have included:

Lasers, laser beams and coherence Nonlinear frequency conversion Ultrashort optical pulses Optical fibre devices and components Optical measurement techniques Erbium-doped fibre amplifier, THz spectroscopy.

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.