Photonics is the underlying technology supporting today's worldwide telecommunications networks and the internet.  Increasingly, the amount of information which can be transmitted over existing networks is becoming limited by the performance of currently available technologies.  Researchers in Tyndall’s Photonics Centre have invented new systems that allow optical data to be transmitted directly to the consumer (“Fibre-to-the-home”) in highly energy-efficient ways and new techniques to increase the capacity of the network by using multiple colours of light to send information over a single optical fibre with minimal interference.  These new systems are critically dependent on the development of new generations of high quality semiconductor materials, novel devices, integrated photonic and electronic circuits and packaged sub-systems; areas in which Tyndall also has internationally-leading capabilities. In addition to communications, Tyndall is also pursuing the application of its photonic technologies in areas such as healthcare, computation and data storage. 

Tyndall’s Photonics Centre comprises over 100 researchers and support staff working on many of the key aspects of photonics, ranging from quantum processes and materials at the atomic level, photonic devices and device physics, integrated photonic- and electronic-circuits and packaged sub-systems, to advanced photonic communication and sensing systems.

Areas of Expertise:

Quantum Optics

III-Nitride and III-V Materials and devices

Growth and physics of nanostructures

Laser physics

Photonic packaging and integration

Photonic communications systems