Previous Colloquia in Physics & Astronomy

Quantum Technology Research in Physics & Astronomy Dr Bruce Ou University of Southampton 15:00, Friday 10 October 2025 Physics Seminar Room (Building 46/5081) (TBA)

Hampshire's Space Rocket - the story of the Skylark Robin Brand 15:00, Friday 2 May 2025 Physics Seminar Room (Building 46/5081) These days, few have heard of the Skylark sounding rocket. Yet, in November 1957, it was the first British rocket to reach space, and became the basis of Britain's earliest space programme. Hundreds were fired, launching into space thousands of scientific instruments. Many of these carried out pioneering astronomical observations in the X-ray and UV spectrum – regions previously unavailable to British scientists. This talk tells the story of that space rocket, from its origins in the 1950s until its last launch exactly 20 years ago. Some rare photographs from Australian archives, and rare video footage of Skylark launches, will be shown during the presentation. An electronic engineer by profession, Robin Brand has always been interested in space matters , having graduated from the 'Eagle' comic and 'Dan Dare' (in colour) via 'The Sky at Night' (in black and white) to membership of the British Interplanetary Society (in 3D!). His book Britain's First Space Rocket: the story of the Skylark will be for sale after his talk.

Brillouin Optomechanics in Whispering-Gallery-Mode Microresonators: strong coupling, the lasing transition, and single-phonon addition and subtraction operations Prof Michael Vanner Imperial College, London 15:00, Friday 28 March 2025 Physics Seminar Room (Building 46/5081) Brillouin-Mandelstam scattering in whispering-gallery-mode microresonators offers an exciting avenue to pursue both classical and quantum optomechanics applications. Our team — the Quantum Measurement Lab — together with our collaborators, are currently exploring and utilizing the favourable properties this platform affords for non-Gaussian motional state preparation of acoustic fields. In particular, the high acoustic frequencies, acoustic mode selectivity, and low optical absorption provide a promising route to overcome current hindrances within optomechanics. Some of our key recent results in this direction include: the first observation of Brillouin optomechanical strong coupling, single-phonon addition and subtraction to a thermal state of the acoustic field, advancing the state-of-the-art of mechanical state tomography to observe the non-Gaussian states generated by single- and multi-phonon subtraction, and studying the second-order coherence across the Brillouin lasing threshold. This talk will cover these results, what they enable, and the broader direction of our lab including the prospects of this platform for quantum science and technology. Time permitting, the talk will also cover our latest experimental research demonstrating enhanced laser cooling via zero-photon detection, and our studies of Brillouin scattering in optical fibre at millikelvin temperatures.

Trusted Research Sophie O National Protective Security Authority 15:00, Friday 28 February 2025 Physics Seminar Room (Building 46/5081) The NPSA is the protective security arm of the Security Service, MI5, and along with organizations such as the National Cyber Security Centre works to tackle security threats including espionage and terrorism. In this colloquium, government representatives Sophie O and Alastair W will outline the risks to academia emanating from state threat actors, ranging from risks to academics themselves through to risks to their research. This will be followed by an introduction to the Trusted Research advice and guidance, which will provide practical steps on how to mitigate research security risks to protect both yourself and your research.