News

Bill took part in a special symposium to mark the 70th birthday of the Dutch physicist Ad Lagendijk. The event, Ad70, was held at the University of Twente in the Netherlands on Thursday June 28, 2018This was a wonderful meeting full of excellent science and good...

Bill Barnes at QED-M2, a specialist two day international workshop hosted at the College de France, Paris, by Prof. Thomas Ebbesen, on June 18-19, 2018This was an outstanding two day workshop that brought together speakers from as far as Japan and the US. The picture...

Kishan Menghrajani and Bill Barnes at SCOM18. Kishan presented some of his work on vibrational coupling.Bill was one of the founding organizers of the SCOM workshop series, and this workshop in Eindhoven was a major meeting for discussion on the topics covered by...

Henry Fernandez and Bill Barnes spent the day at the Diamond Light source (a synchrotron in the UK) to carry out come circular dichroism measurements. We are working with Dan Pantos and Dora Rasadean (University of Bath) to explore chrial dye molecules for both weak...

I have joined a UK project, “Hybrid Polaritonics” as an advisor. This EPSRC-funded programme grant is devoted to using excitons from organic and inorganic origins. My first meeting was in Sheffield, so an early start before sunrise. A very impressive project so far,...

Special issue of ACS Photonics published today, “Strong Coupling of Molecules to Cavities”. Together with Francisco Garcia Vidal and Javier Aizpurua I guest-edited this special issue, based on the workshop we held in San Sebastian, SCOM16. The special issue can be...

Truly impressive optical cavity. Today I was lucky to visit the European Gravity Observatory (VIRGO) just outside Pisa, Italy. The recent observation of a neutron star merger via gravity waves (of which VIRGO was a part) and via electromagnetic radiation has been a...

One of the important classes of molecules we want to work with are known as J-aggregates. These molecules are a hang-over from the days of colour photography. We are interested in them because they consist of aggregates of dye molecules in which the individual...

Our prior work on weak coupling, “A molecular Route to Nanophotonics” is highlighted by the Optical Society for all (OSA), one of 30 projects world-wide to be highlighted of 2017 in the OSA’s journal Optics and Photonics News.  

We held our first group meeting today, now that our forts project postdoc has joined us. From left to right the people are: Milo Baraclough, Kishan Menghrajani, Philip Thomas, Bill Barnes and Henry Fernandez.  

We have taken over a new lab to set up our piezo-controlled microcavity set-up. This system will be a key part of our research into strong coupling at visible frequencies. Henry Fernandez (shown) will use this system to investigate the effect of strong coupling on...