Department of Physics

Institute:	University of Joensuu
Address:	P.O. Box 111, Yliopistokatu 7 80101 Joensuu Finland
Website:	http://physics.joensuu.fi
Contact person	Turunen Jari
Presentation:	JOE.pdf (42.29 kB)

Description

The University of Joensuu is a university with five faculties, located in the town of Joensuu in eastern Finland. With 25 staff members and more than 40 externally funded researchers, the Department of Physics is the largest academic unit specializing in modern optics in Finland. The department is internationally best known for its research in diffractive and micro-optics and color science, but active research groups also operate in the fields of optical materials inspection, nonlinear optics, and didactical physics. In recent years the department has organized several major national and international conferences, such as the EOS Topical Meeting on Diffractive Optics in 1997, the Annual Meeting of the Finnish Physical Society in 2001, and the ICO Topical Meeting on Polarization Optics in 2003. The department also coordinates the national Graduate School on Modern Optics and Photonics, which combined the expertise of all leading optics laboratories in Finland.

The wave-optical engineering research group, established in 1994 by Prof. Jari Turunen, will be responsible for carrying out the research defined in the NEMO proposal. The group has grown steadily and now consists of approximately 20 members: two professors, 6 post-doctoral researchers, 10 PhD students, a laboratory engineer and a technician. Some of these persons are also associated with the newly established InFotonics Center Joensuu and the spin-off company Nanocomp Ltd founded in 1997. Thus far the group has produced 9 Ph.D. degrees and, since 1995, more than 90 peer-reviewed scientific articles.
The main activities of the group are related to diffraction, coherence, and polarization of light, and to optics of waveguides and pulses. Extensive facilitaties exist for fabricating microstructured optical elements and to characterize the interaction of light with them. The main writing tool is the Leica LION LV1 electron beam pattern generator. Other associated facilities permit dry etching, evaporation of metals and dielectrics, nickel electroplating, and electron-beam, atomic force, optical and mechanical inspection of surfaces. A substantial part of the funding of these facilities has been obtained from EU.