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Optical and photonics instrument science and research are crucial to advances in modern astronomy. IPOS is at the forefront and one of the pioneers of the cross-disciplinary area of Astrophotonics, which lies at the interface of astronomy and photonics. This burgeoning field, now formally recognised by the international photonics community, has emerged over the past decade in response to the increasing demands of astronomical instrumentation.

IPOS hosts the Sydney Astrophotonics Instrumentation Laboratories and the Astralis-USyd part of the Astralis Instrumentation Consortium. SAIL researchers develop novel optical and photonics instrumentation and concepts in imaging, wavefront sensing and interferometry. These novel concepts developed at SAIL are now being explored for the new generation of extremely large telescopes, space technologies, defence and industry projects. Further, Astralis-USyd are developing new in-house technologies in optical fibres and robotic positioning.

Research in the Molecular Photonics and Chemistry area focuses on harnessing strong light-matter interactions to control and manipulate the optoelectronic properties of novel nanoscale semiconductor materials, enabling new avenues for optical computing.Ìý

We are interested in identifying new materials for all-optical switches and isolators, utilising strong light–matter interactions to enhance organic semiconductor photophysics, and manipulating chiral light–matter interactions to uncover new optical signatures for information encoding.

Our research probes the quantum interactions between light, electronics, and atoms embedded in crystals. Understanding and engineering these interactions at the atomic scale promotes new technologies for connecting and exploiting quantum systems for developing platforms for robust optical storage of quantum information, multi-system compatibility and versatile on-chip architectures.

Further, we develop and use theoretical and numerical methods to understand and exploit quantum optics systems composed of many atoms in order to answer fundamental physics questions in quantum optics. Using our understanding in this area helps build new quantum technologies.

Our specialist research focuses on fundamental research in areas including microwave photonic devices and subsystems, photonic signal processing, integrated photonics, sensing, nonlinear fibre optics and biophotonics.

Our researchers have significant collaboration with the Defence Science and Technology Group (DSTG), the Department of Defence and industry, with thier achievements benefiting industry and society in the areas of information processing, defence, security and health.

We are interested in nanophotonics, topological materials, quantum photonics, non-Hermitian physics, and thermal photonics. We engage in both theoretical and experimental studies. Our research finds applications in integrated devices, sustainable energy, and information processing. Our work contributes to advancing several research areas, including plasmonics, nonlinear photonics, and optogenetics.

We also investigate how light interacts with structured materials across a broad range of scales, from nanoscale photonic architectures such as metamaterials to macroscopic fibrous textiles. Our work bridges fundamental theory and applied experimental research.

Based in the Sydney Nanoscience Hub and the School of Physics, our researchers drive fundamental and applied breakthroughs across optical physics, photonic sciences, and optoelectronics. Purpose‑built, state‑of‑the‑art laboratories and class‑100 clean‑room facilities give us every technological advantage for nanofabrication and rapid prototyping.

We are integral to the Institute  of  Photonics and Optical Science, the NSW Smart Sensing Network, and the Sydney Nano Institute, generating collaborative momentum across disciplines. Through the Jericho  Smart  Sensing  Laboratory, we translate discoveries into mission‑ready sensing platforms. From quantum‑scale devices to disruptive integrated systems, we push light’s boundaries to solve real‑world challenges, benefiting industry and society.

We carry out experimental and theoretical research on optical solitons, which retain their shape upon propagation by balancing the effects of nonlinearity and dispersion. While the dispersion has traditionally been quadratic, so the group velocity depends linearly on frequency, our unique experimental setup lets us program in any type of dispersion. This includes, for example, quartic dispersion, whereby the group velocity depends on the third power of the frequency, as well as fractional dispersion.

While our research is firmly in physics, we collaborate closely with colleagues from mathematics, which allow us to work on a variety of challenging projects that are of interest to wide range of researchers.

We pioneered Microstructured Polymer Optical Fibre (MPOF). The fabrication techniques we use allow us to make and study structures that would be very had to make in silica. We explore a wide range of material properties of polymers that can incorporate material additives such as dyes and metal inclusions. We used this approach very successfully to make a range of novel metamaterials, and biomedical devices, by drawing exotic elastic polymers and hybrid polymer metal structures.

Furthermore, our researchers modify the properties of silicate glasses to provide them with enhanced nonlinearity that can be used to realise novel devices with important functionality. The approach involves poling of silicates glasses and silica fibres and through the application of intense electric fields together with either intense laser irradiation or heat.

Terahertz waves, at frequencies between microwaves and infrared, offer promising possibilities but remain experimentally challenging. In close collaboration with CSIRO (Dr Alessandro Tuniz) we explore several aspect of THz physics, in particular time-variable THz devices and metamaterials for non-reciprocal physics (in collaboration with the Institut Fresnel, France) and in quantum THz (with the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris):Ìý Single-photon single-electron quantum coupling at THz frequencies could allow quantum gates to operate at temperatures of a few Kelvin rather than millikelvins, with considerably cheaper and scalable cryogenic requirements enabling large scale quantum computing. Our terahertz physics lab builds on a time domain spectroscopy and cryogenic setup to work towards demonstrating quantum effects at THz frequencies, concentrating on resonator design and characterisation.