Research in Physical Sciences at Heriot-Watt University spans the fundamental to the applied. Interdisciplinary is central to the university's research strategy against a policy of maximising the impact of research outputs.
Heriot-Watt University’s strengths in the physics of lasers, photonics, and optoelectronic devices is exploited within the Institute of Photonics and Quantum Sciences covering photonic physics, engineering photonics and quantum sciences, building on a 40+ year history of world-leading research. Our broad research base encourages cross-fertilisation of ideas across the theoretical and experimental base of photonics and quantum sciences.
A custom designed Hanburry Brown – Twiss interferometer for single photon antibunching.
PhD students Rima Al-Khuzheyri and Peter Kremer of the HWU Quantum Photonics Lab assemble a custom-built cryostat.
PhD student Peter Kremer of the Quantum Photonics Lab operates a state-of-the-art electron beam lithography system to fabricate photonic structures with embedded quantum dots.
PhD student Ralph Malein of the HWU Quantum Photonics Lab investigated his sample mounted on a piezoelectric motor stack for ultra-precise positioning at cryogenic temperatures.
A chiral bright matter wave solition oscillating in a harmonic trap, but only half of the time! The nonlinearity is in the form of a current which provides a direction dependent sign of the nonlinearity. The effect can be created using density dependent artificial gauge fields, see Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 085301 (2013).
