'Doing' video feedback
photo by Ian MacVicar

Dr Johannes Courtial
School of Physics & Astronomy
Kelvin Building, room 157c
University of Glasgow
Glasgow
G12 8QQ
Scotland, U.K.

Tel: +44 (0)141 330 6429
(internal extension: 6429)
Fax: +44 (0)141 330 2893
e-mail: johannes.courtial@glasgow.ac.uk

Research interests

• metamaterials for light rays (METATOYs)
• fractal laser modes and video-feedback patterns
• orbital angular momentum of light

In addition to doing research, I have an interest in promoting research to a wide audience through

• interactive web pages: I have written the Java applets on the group's web pages;
• films: I have introduced into the Glasgow curriculum a film project in which undergraduate students produce a short film, aimed at students entering University, that explains an aspect of the department's research;
• computer visualization: surely, the core of optics is about visual things, and photorealistic ray-tracing simulations form an integral part of my work on METATOYs.

A few of my responsibilities

• Mathematical Methods 1 (part 1; 3rd-year undergraduate course)
• Modern Optics (part 1; 3rd-year undergraduate course)
• Frontiers of Optics (4th-year undergraduate course)
• Optical Control (SUPA postgraduate course)

• Green Champion for the College of Science and Engineering
• 3rd-year physics class head
• departmental laser safety officer and safety committee member

News

• November 19, 2003: One of my pictures features as NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day!
• February 17, 2004: I'm on the German national radio programme Forschung aktuell (Deutschlandfunk)

Selected publications

• Alasdair C. Hamilton and Johannes Courtial, Metamaterials for light rays: ray optics without wave-optical analog in the ray-optics limit, New J. Phys. 11, 013042 (2009), doi: 10.1088/1367-2630/11/1/013042
• J. Leach, M. J. Padgett, S. M. Barnett, S. Franke-Arnold, and J. Courtial, Measuring the orbital angular momentum of a single photon, Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 257901 (2002)
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• Johannes Courtial, Jonathan Leach, Miles J. Padgett, Image processing -- Fractals in pixellated video feedback, Nature 414, 864 (2001)
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• J. Courtial and M. J. Padgett, Monitor-outside-a-monitor effect and self-similar fractal structure in the eigenmodes of unstable optical resonators, Phys. Rev. Lett. 85, 5320-5323 (2000)