Visit by Sile Nic Chormaic's Group

On Thursday 3 May we were visited by members of Sile Nic Chormaic's Group from University College Cork who were in London en route from Ireland to Japan.  Our groups collaborate on the Nanofibre Optical Interfaces for Ion Atoms and Molecules (NOIs) project.  Some pictures of the group were taken by Dr VB Tiwari (UC Cork & Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology, Indore).

New Group Members

Chris Fury has joined the UCL Optical Tweezers Group from April 2012 to study for a PhD.  Chris gained a degree in Physics from Exeter University, followed by an MSc in Fusion Energy from York University, which included a research project at the Central Laser Facility at the Rutherford Appleton Lab.

Chris joins the group to work at the National Physical Laboratory on the NPL/UCL optical and acoustic microbubble trapping project.

Physics Department Annual Review

The UCL Department of Physics & Astronomy Annual Review 2011-12 has been published.  In this year's review Phil is featured in the 'Academic showcase' section.

Royal Society Summer Exhibition 2012

The UCL/NPL microbubble trapping project will have a stand at the Royal Society Summer Exhibition 2012, called 'Pop! The sound of bubbles'.  This stand will be run by many of the scientists involved in the project including Gianluca Memoli, Eleanor Stride, Caroline Harfield & Louise Wright.  The exhibition runs from 03-08 July 2012 at the Royal Society.
Our display will feature the science of microbubble trapping as well as many other everyday applications of microbubble technology (including some that might surprise you!).
You can follow the sound of bubbles blog for the latest updates on our project, or the Summer Science 2012 twitter @summerscience for more about the exhibition.

David Carberry visit and seminar

David Carberry (Bristol University) is visiting and giving the AMOP Physics seminar on Wednesday 22 February.  David works on optical micromanipulation techniques and recently demonstrated a multi-point holographic optical tweezers controlled through an iPad.  The abstract for his seminar is below:

Title:  Non-spherical optically trapped probes: Design, control and applications
Abstract: Non-spherical probe particles have a number of advantages over microspheres: rotational motion may be monitored and controlled, the trapping points may be removed from the probe’s tip, and the tip can be more accurately positioned than a microsphere of equivalent radius.

We demonstrate a range of non-spherical probes, and discuss how they may be tailored to specific applications. We consider how probe geometry affects the region of space the tip explores – the ‘tip thermal volume’, and the relaxation times of this motion¹. By independently position-clamping translational and rotational modes in different ways, we are able to further control the shape of the tip thermal volume, and dramatically improve the position resolution of the probe, with no reduction in force sensitivity².

Using holographic optical tweezers combined with stereomicroscopy, we can both control and track the motion of our non-spherical probes in all three dimensions. Finally, we demonstrate the use of our probes to image surfaces in 3D³, and measure force and torque interactions with biological specimens. 

  

1. S.H. Simpson and S. Hanna. ‘Thermal Motion of a holographically trapped SPM-like probe’. Nanotechnology, 20 395710 (2009)
2. D.B. Phillips et al. ‘Position clamping of optically trapped microscopic non-spherical probes’. Optics Express, 19 20622 (2011)
3. D.B. Phillips et al. ‘Surface imaging using holographic optical tweezers’. Nanotechnology, 22 285503 (2011)

Visit by Onofrio Marago

Onofrio Marago from the NanoSoft Lab, IPCF-CNR (Messina) is visiting our group at UCL from 26-31 January.  Our groups have a long-running collaboration, and exchange visits are funded by the Royal Society as part of our International Joint Project on Photonic Force Microscopy.

AMOP Physics Open Day

The Atomic Molecular Optical and Positron Physics group will be holding an Open Day on Wednesday 08 February 2012 at 13:00. Come along and find out more about working towards a PhD in our group! You'll get to hear about our research programs, talk to group members and potential supervisor as well as see our labs. 

There are PhD opportunities in theoretical and experimental research in the following areas:
 

• Cold matter and optical trapping
• Positron and positronium physics
• Quantum effects in biological systems
• Quantum information and quantum computation
• Theoretical molecular atmospheric and astrophysics
• Ultracold quantum gases
• Ultrafast laser spectroscopy and strong laser interactions

For more information on studentship opportunities and the application process, please follow this link. You are strongly encouraged to email potential supervisors directly regarding potential projects and funding.

The Open Day will be held in rooms A1 and A13 located on the top floor of the Physics building on UCL's main Gower Street Campus. Please see here for further details of how to get to us.  The agenda of the day is:

13:00 - 13:30  Introductory talk by Prof Peter Baker and Prof Sougato Bose (A1)

13:00 - 13:15  Buffet Lunch (A13)

13:15 - 15:00 Poster presentations by research groups (A13)

14:00 - 16:00 Lab tours