Senior Visiting Fellowship: Photonic Crystal Research

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Photonic crystals are periodic structures with lattice constant on the order of the wavelength of light. The periodicity leads to the formation of bands and band gaps for photons, with applications in the control of the propagation and switching of light. In structures with deliberately introduced defects confinement of light in small volumes is enabled, resulting also in the control of interactions between photons and material excitations. This proposal requests funds to support a three month visiting fellowship for a world expert in the field of photonic structures to visit Sheffield to carry out collaborative research with the photonics group at Sheffield. It is expected that the requested visit will enable the achievement of advances in excitation techniques of small volume photonic structures, and new insight to be gained into the physics of emission mechanisms in small volume light emitters. In particular evidence for strong coupling between single electronic excitations (excitons) in semiconductor nanostructures with single confined photon states will be sought. Once this is achieved evidence for non-linear behaviour at the single exciton single photon level will be sought, the basis for extremely sensitive switches, and at the same time the entry level for a variety of quantum optical phenomena including few photon lasing, and single photon phase gates.