I use nonlinear optics to create new light sources with tailored, and extreme, spectral and temporal properties. Examples include the generation of high energy single-cycle pulses in both the ultraviolet (especially the vacuum region), and the mid-infrared, and producing ultrafast electric field waveforms called optical attosecond pulses (pulses shorter than one million billionth of a second in the visible and ultraviolet).

My work is a symbiotic mix of experimentation and numerical modelling. I make use of nature’s full landscape of materials, laser beam geometries and nonlinear effects, but my favourite system is hollow glass waveguides (such as photonic crystal fibres and capillaries) filled with gases, liquids, and plasmas.

With these light sources I investigate the fundamental physics of nonlinear optics, new ways of driving strong-field physics (such as high-harmonic generation and the creation and evolution of plasma) and advanced spectroscopy.