Prof Eric Potma visit to the Centre

The Centre hosted Prof Eric Potma from the University of California, Irvine for his first international visit to Adelaide.

During Eric’s visit, he gave a fantastic presentation as part of the Institute for Photonics and Advanced Sensing (IPAS) seminar series in which he discussed the way his lab utilises silicon in modern optoelectronics.

He highlighted three unusual near-field optical phenomena of silicon, including:

• Dramatic enhancement of linear absorption enabled by confined light
• Extraordinarily efficient nonlinear absorption at nanostructured Si surfaces
• The ability of nanostructured silicon to boost coherent Raman scattering of molecular targets

A fascinating takeaway for our lab was the ability to use standard silicon cameras to image mid-infrared light for use in biological imaging and spectroscopy by utilising helper optical pulses.

We also hosted a Q&A session for Undergraduate, PhD students, and Early Career Researchers to ask Eric about his career, how he got the stage of running his own laboratory, and gain insights into academic life. We were doubly lucky to also have Prof Shanti Bhattacharya from the Indian Insitute of Technology, Madras in attendance offering her own perspectives to the conversation. Centre post-doc Chris Perrella ran the Q&A session which had 20 students and ECRs around the table picking Eric’s brain.