Deb Kane

Biography

Professor in Department of Physics and Astronomy at Macquarie University.

Research Interest

My research has been over a broad range of areas in laser physics; incoherent light sources; and the application of these lasers and sources in spectroscopy, optical metrology, communications and interactions with materials. Current foci in research are listed below. Laser physics of semiconductor lasers. Nonlinear dynamics of semiconductor lasers and developing chaotic semiconductor lasers for applications in secure communications. Characterising noisy chaotic data, determining noise robust chaos analysis methods, and transferring this knowledge, obtained in these more controllable physical systems, to other nonlinear systems. Fundamental studies, both experimental and simulations, of the physics of laser irradiated particle on surface systems. Modification (chemical and surface roughness) of the surfaces of materials using laser processing. Studying the optical properties of micro- and nano-sized particles as compared to the bulk material and the implications and applications of this in laser processing. Using pulsed lasers to laser clean particles, hydrocarbons and moisture from surfaces, particularly optical materials. Research on VUV/UV sources based on dielectric barrier discharges that can give higher efficiency, higher peak fluence, and spatially uniformity of the source output, compared to prior art (MQU patent). The VUV wavelengths attainable using the rare gases are 172 nm (7.2 eV photon energy), 146 nm (8.5 eV), 126 nm (9.9 eV), 88 nm (14.1.eV) and 60-80 nm (20.7 - 15.5 eV). The applications of such high energy photons are numerous but so far we have researched using the sources for surface cleaning and modification to date. A new project extends our laser cleaning research into the development of laser conservation methods applied to art and artifacts in Indigenous and Oceania cultural heritage.