Dr Tim Freegarde - group leader |
Tim is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Physics & Astronomy. Born in Sheffield but raised in Dorset,
he studied at New College, Oxford and received his DPhil from the
university's laser group. After a couple of years in industry, he
returned to academia under Prof Ted Hänsch at the
Max Planck Institut für Quantenoptik after which, with a brief stop at the
European Lab for Nonlinear Optics (LENS), he moved to Oxford's
Physical & Theoretical Chemistry Lab. Following a
further two years at the Università di
Trento and a short spell at Imperial College, he came to
Southampton in 2003. His hobbies include gliding and
sailing.
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Dr James Bateman |
James joined the group in 2004 as our second PhD student, following his degree at Imperial College,
London, and has remained with the group since being awarded his PhD in 2009. James's PhD research addressed the coherent manipulation
of ultracold rubidium, the development of a phase-programmable laser source and many aspects of experimental control, together with
theoretical studies of the fidelity of the coherent manipulation scheme, all described in his thesis
'Novel schemes for the optical
manipulation of atoms and molecules'.
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Dr Hamid Ohadi |
Hamid is a post-doc working on the optical cooling and trapping of atoms and molecules using nanostructured surfaces. Originally
an ion trapper, he joined us in 2008 from Imperial College, London.
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André Xuereb |
André joined us in 2007 to work on optical cooling and trapping using nanostructured surfaces. Having come all the way from Malta,
he finds the nearby Isle of Wight makes him feel reassuringly at home.
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Nathan Cooper |
Nathan joined us from Cambridge in 2009 to work on optical cooling and trapping using nanostructured surfaces.
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Alex Dunning |
Alex joined us from University College, London in 2010.
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Jo Rushton |
Jo is a Southampton graduate and joined us in 2010 to work with Matt on enabling technologies for integrated atom chips.
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Martin Denyer |
Martin is a Southampton finalist, working on enabling technologies for integrated atom chips for the year-long project
of his Physics with a Year of Experimental Research degree.
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Former members |
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Dr Matt Himsworth |
Matt was the group's third PhD student, having spent his undergraduate years in Southampton. His specialization
in the Quantum Control group was the stabilization and locking of semiconductor diode lasers.
Matt was awarded his PhD in 2009 for his thesis
'Coherent manipulation of ultracold rubidium'.
He was a post-doc in Axel Kuhn's group
in Oxford from 2010-2011.
Matt has recently been awarded a 5 year research fellowship from the Royal Academy of Engineering, and rejoined us in 2011 to begin the development of enabling technologies for integrated atom chips.
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Rich Murray |
Rich, our fourth PhD student, was another Southampton graduate, and worked on the coherent manipulation of cold atoms using
the phase-programmable laser and our magneto-optical trap. Having recently moved to Cambridge, he should shortly submit
his thesis on 'The coherent manipulation of Rubidium in a magneto-optical trap'.
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Toby Popplewell |
Toby spent the 2009-10 academic year with us, carrying out his
Physics with a Year of
Experimental Research research project on 'Tuning an external cavity diode laser with a spatial light
modulator'.
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Dr Sunil Patel |
Sunil was our first PhD student, joining us in 2003, and set up most of the major experimental apparatus. Born and bred "uup noorth"
in the Yorkshire Dales, where the puddings are battered and even the M1 is cobbled, he studied Physics at
Imperial College, London and spent a happy year as an Erasmus exchange student in
Trento, Italy.
He was awarded his PhD in 2009 for his thesis
'A chirped, pulsed laser system and magneto-optical trap for rubidium', and is now a computer guru in Cambridge.
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Colleagues |
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Dr Peter Horak - ORC collaboration |
A theoretical physicist from Innsbruck, Peter is one of the founding fathers of cavity-mediated cooling, and leads our theoretical
investigations into such processes.
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Prof Kishan Dholakia - St Andrews collaboration |
Kishan leads a lively group in the Department of Physics and Astronomy
at the University of St Andrews, where he has pioneered laser tweezers: the application
of laser beams to the trapping and manipulaton of particles, atoms and biological cells.
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Dr Danny Segal - Imperial College collaboration |
Danny is a Reader in the Department of Physics at
at Imperial College. His research concerns the trapping and cooling of atomic ions, and their application to
fundamental physics and quantum computation.
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