Welcome to the Structured Light Laboratory

Our Story

About us

We are a small, diverse and dynamic group in the School of Physics at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.

Our history traces back to traditional laser beam shaping for commercial applications, then mathematical optics and its applications at the CSIR National Laser Centre, to the new laboratory at Wits, started in 2015.

At the Structured Light Lab, we look at structured light and its applications. By structured light we mean the creation of arbitrarily complex light patterns through the control of light’s polarisation, amplitude and phase. The work is carried out at both the classical and quantum levels and includes topics that range from purely theoretical to purely experimental, with a healthy dose of computational tools and instrument interfacing techniques.