Parkinson's group uses ultrafast optical spectroscopy to study carrier dynamics in photonic materials with quantum device applications. Research directions: (1) Time-resolved photoluminescence — TRPL with single-photon counting to map exciton lifetimes, diffusion, and defect trapping in GaN, perovskite, and 2D semiconductor quantum wells; (2) Optical single-particle spectroscopy — isolating single nanowires or nanocrystals for defect-free measurements of intrinsic optical properties; (3) Photon-number statistics — Hanbury Brown–Twiss measurements of single-photon purity from quantum dots and localized excitons; (4) Semiconductor quantum sensing interfaces — studying how carrier dynamics affect the fidelity of semiconductor-based quantum sensors and emitters.
Vijayan leads the Quantum Engineering Lab at Manchester's Photon Science Institute, focusing on levitated optomechanics. Key results: (1) Programmable cavity-mediated long-range interactions between two levitated nanoparticles via coherently scattered photons (Nature Physics 2024, ETH Zurich/Innsbruck collaboration before Manchester); (2) Ground-state cooling of nanospheres and building toward quantum superpositions; (3) Quantum sensing with levitated systems — ultra-sensitive force/acceleration detectors; dark matter searches with nanoparticle momentum transfer detection (QTFP-funded collaboration with Darren Price); (4) Multi-particle quantum arrays. Royal Society University Research Fellow. Currently advertising PhD positions in quantum sensing with levitated optomechanical systems. Collaborates with Novotny (ETH), Romero-Isart (Innsbruck), and Millen (King's College London).
Waigh's group applies advanced optical and biophysical techniques to study complex biological fluids and single molecules. Research directions: (1) Microrheology — diffusing wave spectroscopy and optical trapping microrheology to measure viscoelastic properties of biopolymer networks and cytoplasm; (2) Antibody / protein dynamics — tracking single-molecule diffusion of antibodies and receptors in complex biological environments using fluorescence; (3) Non-linear flows of antibodies — studying anomalous diffusion and aggregation of therapeutic antibodies; (4) Neutron and X-ray scattering — structural characterization of complex biofluids at PSI facilities. Bridges soft matter physics and single-molecule biosensing.
Winpenny holds the Regius Chair in Chemistry at Manchester and is a world leader in molecular magnetism and molecular nanomagnets for quantum technologies. Research directions: (1) Molecular nanomagnets — synthesis of Cr7Ni 'horseshoe' rings and related cage clusters as prototype molecular qubits with long T2 times; (2) Multi-qubit molecular architectures — covalently linked molecular qubit pairs and arrays for quantum gate operations and distributed sensing; (3) Quantum error correction in molecules — designing molecular systems encoding logical qubits with error protection; (4) Quantum sensing applications — molecular spin systems as ultra-sensitive nanoscale magnetic sensors in the sub-nm regime. Leading the NPL M4Q Network and UK molecular qubit community.