| Office: | Room 455, A29 |
| Phone: | +61 2 9351 2906 |
| Fax: | +61 2 9351 7726 |
| Mail: | School of Physics The University of Sydney Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia |
| Email: | m.desterke@physics.usyd.edu.au |
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The physics of periodic media, both linear and nonlinear, and in 1, 2, or 3 dimensions. I have had a long standing interest in fibre gratings, which are essentially ideal one-dimensional periodic structures. At high intensities these support gap solitons, optical pulses that can travel at a fraction of the speed of light. The higher-dimensional work, which is done in collaboration with colleagues here at the University of Sydney, is mostly linear. It includes photonic band structure calculation, density of states calculations, and the modal properties of photonic crystal fibres.
Fibre Optics. I am working in a number of areas of fibre optics, including dispersion compensation and wide bandwidth amplification.
Frequency conversion in periodically poled media. Frequency conversion in simple one-dimensionally poled media (such as PPLN--periodically poled Lithium Niobate) is well known and understood. However, recently a group from the University of Southampton managed to pole according to a two-dimensional hexagonal lattice (HeXLN). The properties of such structures are much richer than those of PPLN and have only very recently been started to be explored.
Self-writing. Germanosilicate glass (ie. glass that has been doped with some germanium) has the interesting property that its refractive index changes permanently upon exposure to UV radiation. This can be used to write a number of interesting and useful devices such as fibre grating (see above), and self-written waveguides and tapers. We are studying these both theoretically and experimentally.
I am a researcher in the Optical Fibre Technology Centre (OFTC), located in the Advanced Technology Park, close to campus. In practice this means that I have collaboration with the a number of the OFTC researchers, both theorists and experimentalists.
I am an Associate Editor of Optics Express, a web-based journal of the Optical Society of America.
