Australia's Major National Research Facilities - Australian Academy ...

esearchers at UNSW and around Australia.
Centre for Quantum and Atom Optics, (ANU)
The ARC Centre of Excellence for Quantum-Atom Optics (ACQAO) combines pre-eminent Australian theoretical and
experimental research groups in quantum and atom optics. Our aim is to create a powerful network to advance the rapidly
developing field of Quantum-Atom Optics.
Centre for Ultrahigh bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS, U. Sydney)
CUDOS is an ARC Centre of Excellence in the School of Physics at the University of Sydney. The vision of CUDOS is to develop the
experimental and theoretical expertise to design and build linear and nonlinear all-optical signal processing devices, and to miniaturize
these, leading to a "photonic chip" believed to be the building blocks for the next generation of optical systems.
The Ultrafast Photonic Laboratory comprises; an Ultrafast Ti:Sapphire laser system: 80 MHz pulse train, 100 fs pulses, 720-1030 nm
wavelength range, a figure of eight mode-locked fibre laser: 5 MHz 1pulse train, 1.5 ps pulses, tunable over 1530-1560 nm. Amplified
100 mW average power: pulse energy 20 nJ, peak power 10kW, and a Pritel Ultrafast Optical Clock: Erbium fibre laser, 10 GHz pulse
train, 2-10 ps pulses, 20 mW average power, can be amplified to 300 mW: pulse energy 3pJ, peak power 6W.
In the Optical Grating Laboratory fibre Bragg gratings are written into both conventional and chalcogenide glass
fibres/waveguides using novel interferometric side-write technique developed in house. A fully flexible grating writing
system allows for complex grating fabrication (apodisation, chirp) using high power UV (244 nm) and green (532 nm) laser
sources aligned to the interferometric apparatus.
The Picosecond Laboratory contains a diode-pumped mode-locked, cavity dumped pulsed Nd:YAG laser for investigating nonlinear
effects in photonic structures: 1.5 kHz pulse train of 80 ps pulses at 1064 nm with pulse 0.1 mJ energy, peak power 1.25 MW.
The Planar Characterization Laboratory comprises a 25 sq m optical clean room has been recently completed and a state of the art
Newport/Luminos precision (4 nm resolution) automated waveguide-coupling facility has been installed.
Fiber Tapering Facility houses the fibre taper rig, a computer controlled machine which heats and stretches optical fibre to produce a
fibre taper. The taper profiles are tailored by the appropriate choice of flame brushing profile, elongation and rate of elongation. The
taper rig is used to modify the physical properties of both conventional as well as microstructured fibers for the various projects
currently underway. These include shifting the fundamental band gap of photonic crystal fibre, micro-pipettes for micro-fluidic
experiments, nano-wires for photonic circuits and super-continuum generation. A second taper rig is currently being assembled within
the CUDOS clean room to augment the current facility. This rig will be able to produce longer, thinner tapers and as well as
chalcogenide glass tapers for non linear experiments.
Diagnosis Facilities include:
• Monochromator: spectrally-resolved measurements in the 1-5 ?m range via a computer controlled grating based scanning
spectrometer specially modified for the characterisation of photonic crystals.
• Optical Spectrum Analyzers (OSA) and Swept Wavelength System (SWS) to measure passive optical component
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