11.00 am - 12.30 pm Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. My group usually consists of two or three Part II students, two or three doctoral students and a post-doctoral assistant. All the work is centred around the optical properties of solids, using conventional high-resolution spectroscopy and laser spectroscopy, and there is considerable interaction with other ICL groups interested in the solid state. We are at the physical end of the spectrum of ICL activities but usually do some straightforward synthesis, some spectroscopy at liquid helium temperatures and some interpretation. There are two large grating monochromators, one of them a double instrument.
Experimental control is largely by computer interface.
The technique requires high powered broadly tuneable lasers. Applications include the location of parity forbidden charge-transfer transitions and the analysis of the energy levels of lanthanide and actinide ions in centrosymmetric sites. These metals are important in that they act as laser amplifiers and can be used to reinforce the signal in the optical fibres of the telecommunications system. Laser spectroscopy can help to identify the nature of glass sites by using the narrowing of the fluorescence spectrum when only a small sub-set of sites is excited by the laser. We have a collaboration with BT aimed at optimising the properties of fluoride glasses which are more promising in this respect than silica based glasses.