International spotlight on photon-twisting research

Published: 13 May 2015

Professor Miles Padgett is taking the stage at a prestigious photonics conference in San Jose, USA.

Professor Miles Padgett is taking the stage at a prestigious photonics conference in San Jose, USA today (Wednesday 13 May).Miles Padgett

He will be presenting a plenary lecture at the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO), the premier international forum for scientific and technical optics. CLEO 2015 unites the fields of lasers and opto-electronics by bringing together all aspects of laser technology, from basic research to industry applications.

Professor Padgett FRS, the University’s Kelvin Chair of Natural Philosophy, will be discussing his work on adding ‘twists’ to beams of light. Different amounts and directions of twist – technically known as orbital angular momentum – can allow beams of light to carry additional information, creating a faster data transfer or giving new image information or novel sensor systems.

Professor Padgett will be sharing the stage with Professor Shuji Nakamura of the University of California Santa Barbara, last year’s Nobel Prize Winner in Physics during a plenary session celebrating the International Year of Light. A total of six Nobel laureates will be presenting during plenary sessions at the conference.

Professor Padgett said: “I’m honoured and proud to be taking part in CLEO 2015 alongside such distinguished speakers.

“The International Year of Light is proving to be a valuable focal point for a wide spectrum of light-related research, and I’m sure CLEO 2015 will help bring together researchers to discuss their work and come up with new ideas.

“I’m very much looking forward to discussing my own work and promoting the fantastic research which is going on across the University especially within our newly funded Quantum Technologies hub QuantIC, which is pioneering new approaches to imaging.”

Sponsored by the Optical Society (OSA), American Physical Society's (APS) Laser Science Division and IEEE Photonics Society, CLEO provides the full range of critical developments in the field, showcasing the most significant milestones from laboratory to marketplace.


Media enquiries: ross.barker@glasgow.ac.uk / 0141 330 3535

First published: 13 May 2015

<< May